Jane Bonney’s article on boat names reminds me that a couple of years ago some friends of mine sought my advice in the matter of naming their new boat, a fancy yacht, the manufacturing name for this range of vessels being ‘Oyster’. It seemed to me that I was immediately faced with a relatively small range of names to choose from and I consulted the lists of oyster genera in my various literary sources. One name stood out as appropriately elegant for the vessel in question: Pinctada, the Pearl Oyster. Pleased with my inspiration I went back to my friends and offered them the name. After a moment my friend said “No, I don’t think so. It sounds like a dish you might find on the menu of a Spanish Tapas Bar.” I volunteered a few other suggestions but none seemed to delight. In the end I gave Carolyn my copy of the Smith & Heppell Marine Checklist. “Here you are”, I said “there is a wealth of beautiful names in this. I think you could find something you like.” A week or so later my book was returned. Carolyn had found a name she liked – Ondina. “What sort of seashell is it?” she asked. I hesitated, did she, I wondered, really want to know? “Ondina is a member of a superfamily of snails that parasitise other organisms”, I said. Digging myself deeper I volunteered “they feed on the body juices of their host, in this case a worm-like animal called a sipunculan, Phascolion stromi, that in itself is also a free-loader. It lives cemented inside empty gastropod shells.”
In the end my friends called their yacht ‘Opportunity’ but I couldn’t help feeling that an opportunity had been wasted!