I wondered why that should be. Certain old, long-established
names like Edward and Thomas have maintained a regular presence in the lexicon
of English forenames, but Algernon has disappeared. And then I remembered that
Rupert Bear had a friend called Algernon, only they didn’t call him Algernon.
They used the diminutive, Algie.
And that gave me the clue. Algie sounds a lot like algae,
and algae are green, slimy growths which float on top of water and suffocate the
fish. So if you were called Algernon it would be very likely that you would go
into work and people would say things like: ‘There’s nothing green about you,
is there Algie?’ and ‘Hey, Algie. Suffocated any fish today?’ and things like
that. And that wouldn’t very nice, would it?
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