Surnames in Blyton

[markmarchap]

HT Barling (played 1927-48) and SA Block (1928-33) played county cricket for Surrey. Any suggestions why EB used their names for the smugglers in FF4?

[Francis]

Maybe Enid looked at the list of players in the cricket scores in the paper. I believe P.G. Wodehouse
picked Jeeves from amongst the Sussex county cricket first team players.

[markmarchap]

Yes, Wodehouse was a great cricket enthusiast. But Enid must have remembered the names as no first-class cricket was played during the War and Block finished playing in 1933.

[Daisy]

It looks as if she had some knowledge of the team - or it's a huge coincidence that those two names should be used in Smuggler's Top as the two baddies. What an interesting observation markmarchap.

[markmarchap]

Thanks Daisy. I am a member of the ACS (Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians) but of course I read and loved the EB series (especially FF and FFO) and always wondered about these names, especially with Enid's Surrey connection.

[markmarchap]

It seems that Enid reversed the social classes of Barling and Block in Smuggler's Top. Tom Barling was a professional player, whereas Spencer Block was an amateur who also played for Cambridge University and played little top-class cricket in later years due to his business. If he (or less likely Barling) was a friend of EB and her second husband (perhaps she met Block through her husband as they had had business contact), my theory is she made a private joke by using his name for the sinister butler and Barling's for the landowner.

Are there any other detectives there who can solve the mystery more conclusively?

[Maggie Knows]

My kids go to school with some other kids with the family name Smellie. The Smellies are v good at sport so they get on OK.

Gay/Gaye is a pretty common surname. Marvin, anyone ?

I used to work with a woman with the surname Tart, but it can't be easy for a teenager, say...

[Darrell71]

Marvin, anyone ?

Bess Marvin is Nancy Drew's bff.

[Maggie Knows]

Well there's Hank Marvin too, of the Shadows. But I was thinking of Marvin Gaye...

[Paul Austin]

Maybe this thread should be broadened to first names in Blyton, too? some of the names are fascinating. Not names like Mary or Jill which are still in use, but names like Mirabel and Gladys.

[Daisy]

It's a pity Mary and Jill became Pippa and Zoe then!

[timv]

Of course Enid may have picked names entirely at random, and apparently sometimes used the telephone directory to do so. But it would be nice to think that some of them had reasons behind them, though we cannot be sure:
I think 'Barling' was probably used as it is a predominantly Sussex name and hinted at 'Smugglers Top' being in Sussex, ie based on Rye.
Mr Gorgio, the circus boss in Five Go Off In A Caravan, could be the Romany word for a non- Romany/'gypsy'' ie 'Gawjo', implying he is the non-Romany owner of a mainly Romany circus, or yet another Italian-sounding circus name like Galliano and Ravelini (the latter is in 'Three Boys and a Dog').
Mr Gringo, the fairground-owning villain in Five Have Plenty Of Fun, is the Latin American term for an Englishman or American - meaning that he was the English owner of a predominantly Latin American fair? Mr 'Red' Tower in Five Fall Into Adventure is probably a jokey hint at his home's ususual 'add-on' building where he puts George and his flaming hair and temper - and I have an idea it could be a hint at Enid having been inspired by a real tower in Dorset.

I have wondered if 'Mr Wooh' the magician/ memory-man in Five Are Together Again was meant to be an East Asian (Indonesian?) with such an unusual name, or Chinese - Mr Wu? '- and if this was his 'stage-name' or his real name. Probably the former. 'Prince Bongawah of Tetarua' in Mystery of the Vanished Prince also sounds East Asian; both could be jokes by Enid, who had an ear for the amusingly unusual, satirising unusual-sounding Asian names .

Enid had some of the most sinister-sounding villains around before the Bond villains, eg 'Scar-Neck Mannheim' in Castle of Adventure and 'Tonnerre' (French for 'thunder', like his temper) in Rilloby Fair Mystery ; wasn't the smuggler in Adventurous Four Again nicknamed 'Stumpy' because he stumped about in his heavy boots? 'Mr Diaz' in Secret of Spiggy Holes is presumably meant to be a sinister Latin American gangster, unusually involved with a Balkan state's politics - for money? The daftest-sounding name Enid used was probably 'Boney', the nickname of the French boy in one of the Find Outers books, presumably called by the children after Napoleon Buonoparte.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Maybe this thread should be broadened to first names in Blyton, too? some of the names are fascinating. Not names like Mary or Jill which are still in use, but names like Mirabel and Gladys.

There's a thread on first names here, though it hasn't had many posts:

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/foru ... ?f=4&t=322" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Daisy]

Thanks Anita - just looked at it and it's 10 years almost to the day since the last post on there!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Golly - time certainly flies when you're having fun!