I remember back in 2014-15 how girls named Isis were having a rough time of it, and I guess we now have the 2020 equivalent with women like Corona Newton from Oldham – which ironically has the highest number of Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people in England.
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Life was already tough for Corona before the pandemic, with beer-related nicknames following the 49-year-old around since she was a teenager:
People used to call me Guinness and Budweiser. That I could always laugh off. But this is more frustrating, especially when it gets aggressive.
Corona told the BBC that no-one takes her seriously when they discover her Christian name, and she can’t even book a table or open an account without staff giving her suspicious looks:
People have said to me ‘as if I’m going to listen to somebody named after a virus’.
Mum-of-five Corona also gets grief from “really nasty” cold-callers, who say things to her like “is that the virus?”.
In fact while driving her daughter to the dentist last week, Corona received a particularly nasty phone call from a man who started going nuts at her:
He screamed down the phone at me ‘what does it feel like to [do] the world over?’
The name actually comes from the Latin word for crown and also means the aura around stars or the moon. It’s quite a common Spanish surname but less so as a forename – in fact less than 3 girls were named Corona around the UK in 2019.
Rather than change her name, Corona is trying to look on the bright side of things:
In these tough times, if I’ve brightened someone’s day by having a funny name, so be it. At least no-one will ever forget me.
Well I don’t know about “brightened their day” because it sounds like people are weirdly livid about it , but still, that’s a good attitude to have. After all, sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you, or however the saying goes. I mean it could be worse – her parents could have named her ‘Gonorrhea’ or something. See? It’s all about perspective.
For the man who was refused a passport after changing his name to ‘King Of Ink Land King Body Art The Extreme Ink-Ite’, click HERE.
