‘Take the Windrush, then change on to the Suffragette’: onboard the renamed London Overground lines causing controversy

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan next to new line signage at Highbury and Islington station in north London. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

The ancient Egyptians saw names as magical. It was said that Isis tricked Ra, the sun god, into telling her his true name, to give her power over him and put her son Horus on the throne.

Londoners have a different take. The Northern line was nearly named TootanCamden in the 1920s, the historian Robert Graves wrote – a pun on the Tutankhamun craze of the time and the line’s route through Tooting and Camden.