Thursday, August 31, 2006

Smellies and Bottoms named in surname list of shame

The nation's most embarrassing surnames have been revealed today with experts showing Cocks come from Truro, Willys hail from Taunton and Bottoms call Huddersfield home.

Variations on a theme show Handcock, Glasscock, Hickinbottom, Shufflebottom and Winterbottom are also among the names people have been most desperate to shake-off in the last 100 years.

The number of people with the surname Cock is now at only a quarter of the level it was in 1881, putting it at the top of the list compiled by a team of geographers at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London (UCL).

Glasgow was the home of the most Smellies in 1881, while Nottingham was home to the Dafts, Jellys were based in Guildford and Piggs in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Blackburn is named as the original hometown of Nutters - but their numbers have held up. The number of Nutters has only fallen by 35 per cent in more than a century.

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