Stephen Bayley

What's in a name? More than you ever realised

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I am fascinated both by lost causes and by names. Of the former, my wife and Personal Financial Advisor can supply authoritative, if embarrassing, detail. Of the latter, read on.

There is a town, once a tiny settlement, in Wyoming called Dreadful. It came about when a passing President arrived, looked despondently around, then spoke to the little group of anxious founding settlers and said 'You must think this place dreadful. And they thought, if that's what the Prez wants to call it, good enough for us. The name I have changed, but the story's true.

Corsair is a favourite name of mine. A '59 version of the doomed Ford Edsel, one of the most fascinating cars ever made, was a Corsair. Today the name exists as a badge on a US-market Lincoln SUV, a gussied-up Ford Escape, ideal for the soccer mom to go off-roading between K-Mart and Whole Foods.

But the history of the name is more interesting.