IN 2006, the name topped the list of most popular girls' names;
but, in the 1960s, the only people you knew called Grace were
probably aged spinster aunts - with one obvious exception. Now, in
the wake of the catastrophic reception of the Grace Kelly biopic,
the name looks set to be consigned to another period of
neglect.
In State of Grace (Radio 4, Monday of last week), Grace
Dent offered an entertaining account of the name, whose initial
popularity came as part of a wave of virtuous Puritanism. Happily,
the vogue for phrase names such as "Weep-Not", and
"Fly-Fornication" was shortlived; but Grace, along with Hope, Joy,
and the like, made it into our genealogies.
The Puritans were masters at using names as a form of moral and
social control; but Dent gave us a vision of "Grace" which
transcended pious wishful thinking. Her chief witness was Grace
Maxwell, who began to reflect on her name when dealing with her
husband's illness. Struck down by a brain haemorrhage, Edwyn
Maxwell's recovery was regularly delayed by diagnostic error, and
compounded by infections.
Her attitude towards the frustrations was summed up admirably in
the phrase "I can't be doing with flappin'" - although it was clear
that she is capable of a delivering a damn good flap when the
occasion demands.
But the virtue of rising above the petty, and focusing on the
important, is something that she demonstrated with touching
determination.
Faith and Charity: two more names from the aspirational school
of nomenclature. But are they siblings? A recent BBC poll sug-gests
that they are, indeed, closely related; and, in The Daily
Telegraph, the claim went further: "Religion makes people more
generous."
Regular readers will know of my admiration for Radio 4's
More or Less (Fridays) - the statistics programme that
does the work of sceptical analysis that is seldom found elsewhere
- and, last week, the team had a go at the issue, armed with its
regular rallying cry: "Correlation is not causation"; in other
words, to identify parallel trends among those who give to charity,
and those who go to church, does not establish a causal link.
There are many problems with extrapolating conclusions from the
BBC poll. One is the definition of charity: does that include
buying a lottery ticket, or buying a charity Christmas card?
More subtly, there is the issue of the order in which you ask
the questions. As fund-raisers will tell you, the effect of asking
a succession of questions to which the answer is "Yes" can be
powerful. In this case, if you have responded "Yes" to the question
"Do you have a religious faith?" it is harder to reply "No" to the
question "Do you give to charity?"
The BBC pollsters defended their methodology. But, in the light
of other evidence, most significantly from the UK Giving survey
commissioned by the Charities Aid Foundation, which reports a much
lower figure overall for households that give to charity, people of
faith are perhaps less entitled to feel smug than the
Telegraph and others might have encouraged them to
feel.