Every name tells a story. We assume we can guess someone’s background from their surnames. And sometimes we can. Last week, I was stopped outside London’s Liverpool Street station by a young man who wanted me to donate to a charity that helped teenagers in the city stay away from knife crime. He asked me my surname. I told him. “Nigerian?” he asked. I said: “Yes”. “Yoruba?” he further asked. I smiled and nodded. “Bawo ni?” he said, which in Yoruba means something like “How are you doing?”. This young man did not come from a Nigerian background. I was impressed enough to give him £20.
But names can also conceal. I recently met a man called Lee Elliot-Major. He is a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter and used to be the chief executive of the educational charity the Sutton Trust. Lee told me that many people assumed he came from a middle-class background because he had a double-barrelled surname. In fact, he was the first person in his family to go to university.
