A PAIR of moneyed new parents have given their beautiful, hours-old daughter a name best suited to a sour schoolmarm who lived a hundred years ago.
New dad Joseph Turner and his wife Eleanor were struggling to decide between a long list of baby names before hitting upon one that they thought was the most awful.
Eleanor Turner said: “We were toying with lots of other candidates – Ethel, Ermintrude, Agatha – but we’ve finally settled on Hortense.
“When I look down at her tiny pink face I just know that it’s the perfect name to carry her through a life of piano lessons, pony club, and a sporty co-ed public school for people who are nice but thick.”
Baby name expert Dr Francesca Johnson said that privately educated couples whose parents got them on the property ladder often choose horrifying names as a show of strength.
She commented: “It’s a power play. They know that any child called Cornelius or Hermione would be bullied to within an inch of their life at a comprehensive school, but such is their privileged lifestyle that they can choose whatever ghastly name they want.
“These dire names should have died out with that generation, but they’re coming back because of shite like Downton Abbey.”
