The Story of Sidonia The Sorceress (Or How Little Cyd Was Saddled With Her Unusual Name)




Do you recognize this woman? If you do, you are certainly giving away your age. Her name is Jeanine Deckers, better known as “The Singing Nun”, who achieved global fame in the early 1960s with a terrible ditty, called “Dominique”. If you don’t recall it, you can listen here, but do not, under any circumstances, click if you do not want to have its twee melody and desperate chorus stuck in your head all day.

For more years than I care to remember, people would sing this song to me, at every possible juncture. I came to loathe the Singing Nun and even, on occasion, to rail against my parents who had given me an unusual French name, difficult to spell and to pronounce and which, moreover, had a dodgy Francophone song attached to it.

So why, you may ask, have I saddled my own, brand new, daughter, with an unusual French name, difficult to spell and pronounce which has a dodgy Francophone song attached to it? Well, as any decent shrink will tell you: these family patterns can be hard to break…

Little Cyd is rather luckier than me in the song stakes, however. The less well-known but infinitely more charming song, “Sidonie” was sung by that antithesis of the Singing Nun: Brigitte Bardot. It featured in a Louis Malle film, also of the early 1960s, called “Vie Privée”. It is definitely a period piece but it has a charm altogether absent from the Singing Nun’s one hit wonder. Listen to it here.

When young Sidonie was still in utero, she was serenaded with the song on a regular basis by a rather legendary Frenchman called Pierre Jean Cousin, to whom I went for ante-natal acupuncture and without whom, I am fairly sure, my pregnancy would not have been so textbook and Cyd might not even have made it here?

Naturally, these chanson sessions were not, by any means, the only reason we plumped, in the end, for Sidonie - à la Française. So many, often contradictory and confusing, factors are at play when it comes to the tricky challenge of giving a baby a name that can define – or indeed restrict – them for the rest of their lives?



She wasn’t always Sidonie, of course. For years, more than a decade in fact, she was actually Sidney – given that any child of Tim’s was bound to be a boy? For several generations, the Kirkmans have only produced male progeny. So it was not unreasonable for us to presume that we would have a son and we had always thought about calling him Sidney – a fine, upstanding Victorian name for a boy.

Both our grandfathers were called Sidney. Tim’s grandfather was the extremely distinguished General Sir Sidney Chevalier Kirkman GCB, KBE, MC (1895-1982) who you can read about here. My Dad’s father was also Sidney and although he didn’t save Florence from the Nazi bombs and does not have his own Wikipedia entry, I still wouldn’t be here without him and neither would little Cyd!

When we found out, to our not inconsiderable surprise, on 26th September last year (my brother Rory’s birthday) that Squidley – as Tim was calling the baby at that stage – didn’t have any dangly bits, we both had to make quite a mental adjustment. Tim started to wonder whether he still wanted her to play rugby for England; I threw myself into a frenzied hunt for non-pink baby clothes.

But by then, we had rather got used to the name Sidney, which is slowly becoming increasingly popular for girls. Perhaps more so in the States but gaining traction on this side of the Pond too. I was concerned that Sid for a little girl was just too masculine but Daddy became increasingly adamant.

Then, one of my aunts (hello Granny Pat!) reminded me of glamorous American dancer and actress Cyd Charisse and Cyd seemed softer somehow? I still had my reservations but quietly started a campaign for the French spelling which again seems slightly more feminine?




"Sidonia von Bork" (1860) by Edward Burne-Jones - Tate Gallery Collection

Possibly the most famous Sidonie is racy French writer, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873-1954), author of "Gigi" and of such bons mots as: “the faults of husbands are often caused by the excessive virtue of their wives”. Not a bad role model for a 21st century girl? There is also Sidonie Goossens (1899-2004), a quite redoubtable harpist, champion of English music and conductors’ muse.

I must say there are times now, usually in the middle of the night, when little Cyd reminds me most of the notorious Sidonie von Borck (1548-1620), a Pomeranian noblewoman and femme fatale who was tried and executed for witchcraft. Unsurprisingly, this Sid’s antics passed into legend and she has been serially immortalised in art and literature, most notably by pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones (above).

Little Cyd's middle name, as many of you will know, is in tribute to my late mother Tina, who again, may not have saved Florence from the Nazi bombs but who was, nevertheless, one of the most courageous people I have ever had the privilege to know.

Quite extraordinarily, I am almost exactly the same age now, with a brand new baby, as my mother was when she passed away in 1975, relectantly leaving myself and Rory to grow up without her. It often makes me unbearably sad that she cannot be here to see her new granddaughter but in that bonkers Irish Catholic superstitious way I quietly hope that Cyd might inherit, I console myself that she is not really so very far away?