Philbert

I feel I can claim with some degree of confidence that many an onomasticator is intimately familiar with the writings of Lucy Maud Montgomery, in particular those that detail the antics of her plucky heroine Anne Shirley. Lest you have forgotten, I remind you:

"Well, don't cry any more. We're not going to turn you out-of-doors to-night. You'll have to stay here until we investigate this affair. What's your name?"
The child hesitated for a moment.
"Will you please call me Cordelia?" she said eagerly.
"Call you Cordelia? Is that your name?"
"No-o-o, it's not exactly my name, but I would love to be called Cordelia. It's such a perfectly elegant name."
"I don't know what on earth you mean. If Cordelia isn't your name, what is?"
"Anne Shirley," reluctantly faltered forth the owner of that name, "but, oh, please do call me Cordelia. It can't matter much to you what you call me if I'm only going to be here a little while, can it? And Anne is such an unromantic name."
"Unromantic fiddlesticks!" said the unsympathetic Marilla. "Anne is a real good plain sensible name. You've no need to be ashamed of it."
"Oh, I'm not ashamed of it," explained Anne, "only I like Cordelia better. I've always imagined that my name was Cordelia—at least, I always have of late years. When I was young I used to imagine it was Geraldine, but I like Cordelia better now. But if you call me Anne please call me Anne spelled with an E."
"What difference does it make how it's spelled?" asked Marilla with another rusty smile as she picked up the teapot.
"Oh, it makes such a difference. It looks so much nicer. When you hear a name pronounced can't you always see it in your mind, just as if it was printed out? I can; and A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e looks so much more distinguished. If you'll only call me Anne spelled with an E I shall try to reconcile myself to not being called Cordelia."

Anne, you will also remember, goes on to fall in love with a boy named Gilbert Blythe, but only after a protracted period of madly disliking him. I recall, but imprecisely, that she at some point muses on his name—that, say, he is indeed not blithe, and nor is he as handsome or as lovable as a Gilbert should be.  

Mind you, that a Gilbert could be handsome, let alone lovable, I once thought wildly funny.

Several years before I first encountered the antics of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s plucky heroine Anne Shirley I watched and rewatched The Muppets Take Manhattan, wherein Jim Henson’s hapless proxy Kermit the Frog, suffering from amnesia, befriends a Bill, a Jill, a Gill, and dubs himself ... Phil.

I should first mention, because it bears mentioning, that I was always troubled by the inclusion of Gill, for who indeed is named that, spelled that way? Gil is one thing, Gill another. But no mind.  After all, I always appreciated, too, that Bill comes from William, Jill from Jill (or, maybe, maybe, Jillian), Gill from Gilbert, and Phil from Philip—that is, that four very different names can nonetheless yield four very similar nicknames.

Unless, of course, Kermit’s Phil was not a Philip but a Philbert, and just as Gilbert yields Gil(l) and Albert yields Al ... well, you know.

And yet, I note, rarely did I mentally link Gilbert to Albert. Gilbert was, for prepubescent me, a wildly unhandsome and unlovable name for its roundness, its bounciness, its goofiness—its gill, as in a fish, and its bert, as in burp, as in that cranky Muppet. No, Albert I linked with Alfred—how many Alfreds, I wonder, go by Al and how many by Fred? If I were one, I would claim that the al meant I was the definite article.

The phil of Philbert, though, means no one, not even Anne Shirley, can accuse it of unromantic fiddlesticks.