Since I seem to be tumbling head over heels into Holmes fandom,

[lotesse]

I've got to ask: who's got the info on his name? Google/various sociological database searches tell me that Sherlock means either "fair-haired" or "short-haired," and that it's a common surname. So what possessed Conan Doyle to give it to his protagonist as a prenomen? Did he ever discuss the name, or what it meant to him?

It's one of those things I'd never noticed, and then I started reading fic and the lovely strangeness of it really leaped out at me. I find it inexplicably - and intensely - sexy.

Comments

[lotesse]

What a reference to saddle a kid with. "Here, little baby, you can be named after an unpleasant and quite possibly racist character from Renaissance theater! Yes, we're quite sure you won't be teased in school."

[bossymarmalade]

Hee! Maybe they hoped his brother Mycroft would take the brunt of the teasing?

[lotesse]

Right, because his name only sounds like it means "my fenced-in bit of land," which is so much better.