What's in a name?

GH chooses an Australian XI of his favourite names

Who knows what Jake Fraser-McGurk may accomplish? But one thing on which we can all surely agree is that he has a fantastic name, as though a hard-bitten cowboy had been adopted by Western District dynasty. It even has a cheeky, perky, up-for-it sound: our beloved colleague Sam Landsberger would write his name on Twitter as ‘Jake Fraser’ with a rooster emoji.

So far as names are concerned, in fact, Australian cricket is actually pretty well off at the moment. We have cricketers with names that sound like daytime serial stars (Teague Wyllie), Alabama billionaires (Hilton Cartwright) and Irish republican martyrs (Paddy Dooley); I particular like those with a hint of bands like Ashton Turner (Overdrive) and Spencer Johnson (Blues Explosion). English cricket, by contrast, is grooved a staccato era of Root, Pope, Potts, Stokes, Woakes and Foakes. Newbies like Smith, Salt, Carse, Cox and Jacks fit right into English teams that may never have contained fewer syllables. It hardly matters when you lose Wood if you have Stone to replace him.

All of which got me thinking about my favourite Australian cricketing names - whether for their euphony, their expressiveness or their improbability amid the general plain tradition of Bobs, Bills, Lens and Kens. Names have always appealed to me, for their ability to evoke a sentiment, a sensation, an era, an intertext. I remember the story of the 1940s schoolchild who said that the three characters who walked into the fiery furnace in the Book of Daniel were Shadrach, Toshack, and Abednego; I like how the Western Australians Gaunt and Hoare were transfigured in the 1960s into Haunt and Gore; in the 1990s I used to hum ‘Martin Love’ to the tune of the Soft Cell cover. So, because you do, I’ve chosen an Australian XI. The criteria is very particular. Usman Khawaja sounds exotic, for instance, but I suspect this is mainly because of his origins. The best names are not, I think, merely about syllables. Sometimes the shortest of names hits the spot in the way a long name does not, such as the way Tom Groube suggests a minor character in Dickens or Beau Casson could be an extra musketeer if you gave a French inflection to his surname. Sometimes it’s simply the sound: viz the subtle imperfect rhyme of Gordon Rorke or the aliteration of Nathan Coulter-Nile. Anyway, for better or worse, longer or shorter, here is a team - do have at it in the comments.

In the 1980s, the endless procession of Gregs and Ians, Tims and Chrises, was broken by that exotic flower of the veldt, Kepler Wessels. Interestingly, according to biographer Edward Griffiths, it was not his family’s first choice of name. At birth he was Petrus; but his maternal grandmother had born a cherished son called Kepler many years earlier on the same date as the new arrival, 14 September, only to lose him to pneumonia aged eleven. A switch was made. A little spooky, perhaps, but Kepler Christoffel Wessels was luckier than his older brother, named, according to Afrikaans tradition, for his paternal grandfather: Wessel Wessels. So obtrusive was the South African’s name in the Australia order that it was as though he needed a nominative counterweight: thus his main opening partners were stolidly named John Dyson and Graeme Wood. Including Kepler, though, means I can’t in all conscience find a place for Marnus Labuschagne - two South African flourishes would be one too many.

This is an XI into which Victor Trumper naturally walks. As Sir Neville Cardus observed: ‘Had Trumper been named Obadiah he could scarcely have scored a century for Australia against England before lunch.’ Like Wessels and Dyson/Wood, Victor Thomas Trumper had a foil to accentuate the musicality of his name: Reg Duff. And VT goes on drawing admirers. He donated his name to media as diverse as a You Am I tour for the symbol of his mighty bound, and the TV series Ripper Street (2012), where he is a villain who meets a bitter end. Series creator Richard Warlow told me: ‘Victor Trumper seemed the ideal moniker for the kind of rogue who might seduce young women into slavery!’

Charlie Trumper, meanwhile, is the wannabe mogul in Jeffrey Archer’s As The Crow Flies (1991). When I interviewed cricket lover Archer in July 1991, I asked whether he would prefer to have been Charlie Trumper or Victor Trumper. He laughed uproariously and confessed he had no idea. Unfortunately the exchange was cut from the piece I wrote - they always cut your best lines - so I’m getting to report it at last.

Trumper is not so uncommon a name. Geo F. Trumper is a famous barber in St James; there are Trumper characters also in George Lamming’s In The Castle of My Skin (1953) and the Shaun The Sheep Movie (2015). But nobody has had such fun with the name as old mate Tim Rice, who used Victor Trumper as a nom de plume when he recorded the novelty single ‘The President Song’ (1974) for MCA fifty years ago, and who conferred the name Freddie Trumper on the American grandmaster in Chess: The Musical [1986]

Tim’s other favourite, incidentally, was Jimmy de Courcy, whose flouncy Anglo-Irish surname he settled on Walter DeCourcey, Trumper’s second in Chess.  James Harry de Courcy was, it seems, the antithesis of his name, the boilermaker son of a boilermaker whose taciturn nature led to the nickname ‘Words’. Still, he’ll make a handy number three.

A bit left field for the number four, but I’ve always liked the sheer unlikeliness of Algy Gehrs, a hard-hitting South Australian who also finished third in the Stawell Gift. Donald Raeburn Algernon Gehrs signed his autograph with his initials but should really have been a character in a play by Oscar Wilde or a member of the Drones Club.

Better known to fame is Moisés Henriques. Moisés Constantino Henriques became the first Test Australian cricketer born in Portugal when he made his debut in Chennai in February 2013. When NSW play WA and Moises faces Corey Rocchiccioli, anything could happen.

Otto Nothling was the youngest of eight children of German immigrants in what was then Teutoberg in Queensland; at the time he was chosen for his only Test in 1928, there were names in cricket in north Queensland as richly Teutonic as Olehmann, Oelkers, Steinhort and Frauenfelder. Nothling later became a dermatologist, affecting a dark fedora and driving a jeep. Want to know more? Peter Roebuck’s Tangled Up in White (1990) contains an enchanting essay ‘Whatever Happened to Otto Nothling?’ and it’s only $8 at the Brotherhood.

With wicketkeepers, we’re rather spoiled for choice. Don Tallon could have stepped from a pulp novel, I also have a bit of a soft spot for Jack Blackham and Hammy Love. But there can be no more evocative Australian cricket name than Wally Grout. He was actually Arthur Wallace Theodore Grout - the Arthur was for his father, the Theodore for Red Ted of that ilk, and the Wallace, according to his grandson and biographer Wally Wright, because his mother thought it ‘sounded more sophisticated’ than Walter, the name of his grandfather. ‘Don’t call me Grouty,’ Wally growled in his autobiography My Country’s Keeper; he further advised people to rely on the mnemonic ‘After the War’ to remember his three initials.

I mean, who doesn't love a Wally? And Grout - it’s like grouse has been crossed with grit to come up with a word for verbal tenacity; his nickname, conferred by Neil Harvey, was ‘Griz’, for his chivvying grizzle when a ragged return came from the outfield. No wonder he brought delight to my friend Kaz Cooke when, many years ago, she launched The Summer Game (1997): ‘Oh, to have played cricket in an era when men had names like Wally Grout.’

For the opening attack, I can’t go past Jo Angel, the lightness of whose name belied the heaviness of his tread, and Jackson Bird, still bowling a voluptuous outswinger. I like to imagine Jackson Bird III as a US vice-presidential candidate with a bald eagle on his letterhead or a dark money billionaire bankrolling Clarence Thomas’s holidays when Harlan Crow isn’t; the middle name Munro completes the republican picture. Mind you, just to confuse things, Tasmania’s highest wicket taker is also a transgender activist. Didn't see that coming, eh? Anyway, fly on Jackson. Bird is the word.

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The approaching sesquicentenary makes it a good time to recall the Centenary Test, and in that context Hans Ebeling. Hans Irvine Ebeling was of German descent; the fairytale nature of his brainchild put Ray Robinson in mind of Hans Christian Andersen; Ebeling, meanwhile, has a lullaby softness, a Christmassy ring.

Clarrie Grimmett was actually born on Christmas Day 1891 in New Zealand, leading his confederate Bill O’Reilly to call him the best present Australia ever received from that country. ‘Clarence,’ said RC Robertson-Glasgow. ‘A strange name for such a man.’ It made him think of wine butts, even though Clarence Victor Grimmett was ‘compounded of tea, leather, patience and subtlety’, with his ‘small stringy frame and his weary, surprised smile.’ But Clarrie is all-Australian, while Grimmett sounds suitably wizened, parsimonious, shrewd. O’Reilly nicknamed him ‘Grum’; Ashley Mallett’s biography perpetuates another alias, Scarlet. But Clarrie Grimmett is so perfect as to render monikers superfluous.

So there you have it: my XI of Australian cricket names in batting order…

1 Kepler Wessels
2 Victor Trumper
3 Jim de Courcy
4 Algy Gehrs
5 Moises Henriques
6 Otto Nothling
7 Wally Grout
8 Jo Angel
9 Jackson Bird
10 Hans Ebeling
11 Clarrie Grimmett

One day I might expand the field to first-class cricketers, and be able to consider the likes of Leonidas Bott, Chilla Christ and Austin Diamond, or do the same for women’s cricketers, of whom I’m not sure there are quite enough yet. But the best may be yet to come: one area where cricket’s horizons appear to be expanding is in nomenclature. My daughter’s school magazine is full of kids called Ivo, Tase, Grover and Roman. Next few years, look out cricket. There’s some magnificent handles coming our way.