Imogen is no Olivia, but it's an increasingly fashionable name, sneaking insidiously up the "100 most popular" lists to its current spot at number 26. A deprecable side effect of this popularity is that I now find myself repeatedly bopped on the nose by the sight of my name, in print, disconcertingly attached to someone else.
The original Imogen – a Shakespearean spelling mistake or printing error, which melted two ns into an m – is the high-mettled daughter of henpecked Celtic king Cymbeline. I've always felt very fond of her: she's a tougher, less despairing Desdemona, who doesn't let herself get bumped off by a jealous and deluded husband, but goes adventuring in drag, acquires two long-lost brothers en route, and achieves a slightly surreal but indubitably happy ending to which even Jupiter lends an appearance. If "nomen est omen", then I consider myself lucky – or I did.
Because my name used to be less prevalent, I was superstitiously excited as a child on coming across an Imogen in a book. The rare sightings gave me a strange feeling of both actually existing – look, proof in print! – and of not quite being there at all, as if the me-Imogen was diluted by the existence of a meticulously created fictional version who wasn't me in the slightest. In my teens, though, I was badly let down by Jilly Cooper's eponymous librarian – I didn't mind that she started out shy, virginal, and girlishly freckled, but I deeply resented the fact that she emerged in the same state. What kind of heroine trips chastely unscathed off the last page of a Cooper bonkbuster, despite having been whisked off to the Riviera by a caddish tennis champion of the sulkiest and most devastatingly sensual kind? Definitely letting the side down.
Recently, the situation has worsened. Both Reginald Hill and Kate Atkinson have cooked up Imogens that I struggle to recognise and don't wish to be associated with. At least Hill's is a cool, amoral Amazon who surges up rock-faces without breaking a sweat, although she's an out-and-out rotter (in her pragmatic approach to adultery, she's the diametric opposite of Shakespeare's Imogen, who chooses the alias Fidele for good reason). But the name also epitomises palomino-blonde Home Counties poise to Tracy, the anguished Atkinson character who reinvents herself as Imogen Brown to disguise the fact that she's bought and made off with someone else's child. I have a hard time reconciling angelic fairness and aristocratic poise (not to mention kidnap) with the Imogen I know best, and it pains me to think that unwitting readers are having their reactions subliminally massaged to expect same. Or what if real Imogens are actually blonde? What if, just as I've always secretly feared, I'm only a dark and shadowy imposter?
Rock bottom was reached last week, though, when my eye was caught by Imogen the Ice-dance Fairy as my daughter yanked it ruthlessly off the children's library's lowest shelf. The IDF, as I've discovered, is a sort of fey Torvill, complete with long, fair hair (I'm resigned now. Evidently Imogen is just a blonde name) and an urgent mission to retrieve her sparkly Dance Ribbon from some malfeasant goblins with the help of two pantingly eager human helpers. For goodness' sake. Not only is this Imogen in charge of Ice Dancing – a modest accomplishment, surely, for any uncannily glamorous being – but she can't even get a measly ribbon back without assistance from small girls! I'm sticking with Shakespeare.
Which fictional incarnations of your name do you most disapprove of, or delight in? And does anyone else share my mildly hysterical paranoia – a bit like treading mentally on a last step which isn't there – when you come across a character who shares your name?