Visit theallusionist.org/trevor to listen to this episode and get more information about the topics therein
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, stick my head in language like an ostrich in sand.
Here we are in another mini season about names, a topic I never tire of – tell me your feelings about your name! Do you like it? Does it get mistaken for another person or a noun for another thing? Did you choose it for yourself, if so, how did you come up with it? Are you called Karen and making moves to change the narrative forced upon your name in the past few years?
Today’s episode is about people being brought together by their shared first name, Trevor, so I ask you: have you ever been brought into the company of other people solely because you share a first name? Have you been to the gathering of Naomis, or Keithmas where Keiths congregate on Keith Richard’s birthday? Let me know! There’s a contact form at theallusionist.org, where there is also a transcript of this episode and all the other ones, plus links to sundry information about each episode’s topics.
Also I mentioned in the past few episodes that the show now has third party ads on it, bleurgh. I won’t know which brands you’re being subjected to, but you can let me know if you hear something particularly diabolical – and several of you have informed me that you got served ads for a bareknuckle boxing cruise, which you thought was not a great match for the usual Allusionist schtick. I can’t speak for all of you listening. Nevertheless, this brand has now been blocked, along with the whole advertising category of seaborne punching sports; but if there’s a positive we can take from this, it is that evidently the algorithms have not yet fully managed to infiltrate your thoughts and browsing history, if they’re thinking “Yeah, getting punched on a boat is very much of interest to people exploring empathy via the topic of language.” So, we take comfort where we can.
You can get an ad-free version of the show via theallusionist.org/donate, and, yes, do contact me via theallusionist.org if you hear an ad for a company flaying puppies to make socks for the IDF, thank you.
While you’re at theallusionist.org, I’ll put up a link for an Open University online conference in November I thought some of you might be interested in attending. I’ll be talking about the Draculae and translation, the event is called Telling the truth? Authorship, audiences and authenticity across discourse, texts and narratives, and one of the organisers is alumsionist Rachele De Felice of the Please episode.
And now, it is Trevor time. On with the show.
TREVOR MURPHY: I should say I have absolutely no idea what to even say. This all started out as kind of a joke thing: my wife would always make fun of my name Trevor.
HZ: Outrageous!
TREVOR MURPHY: You might get a famous person in the news, or somebody criminal called Trevor, she'd be like, "Oh, that's a bad Trevor."
HZ: Do you think your wife would've taken the piss out of your name whatever it is, or is it special for Trevor?
TREVOR MURPHY: No, I'd say she’d take the piss out it whatever it is – but maybe more so because it's Trevor. She likes to make fun of me. And it'd be, you know, silly jokes that married couples have that aren't funny to anyone else. But I'd be like, "Oh yeah, I'll bring that up at the next Trevor Society meeting." Soto take the piss even further, I thought, “I wonder, is there actually actually a Trevor Society” So I Googled that and then sure enough, I came across it, so I thought, “I’ll join that, and then that'll top the joke off.” So yeah, that's how I ended up in it.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: It was October 2023. I was thinking of a retirement project, and it just came in from the universe. I just thought, “I wonder if I could get guys called Trevor to reclaim the name?” So I went on LinkedIn and I just looked for Trevors, and I started contacting them. I thought if I could get 20 or 25, that'd be great. And I've ended up with 140 from all over the world, which I wasn't expecting.
My name is Trevor Cunningham and a few years ago I founded a website called asktrev.com, where I gathered together professionals from around the world who are blessed with the same name of Trevor. The object of this exercise was to provide advice, guidance, expertise, to help solve people's problems, whatever they may be; because there's a massive pool of talent out there offering to give their wisdom and experience and advice to anyone who needs it.
HZ: Ask Trev is, quote, “altruistic endeavours by an army of Trevors”. There are lists of Trevors available to email if you’re seeking legal, financial, medical, practical, education & training, or business advice.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: There's pilots and surgeons, there's gardeners and builders and plumbers – and it's all free! You can Google anything you want, and AI is out there, but these are people who will hand answer specific questions to your personal problem. You can email them directly and say, “This is my situation, this is my problem. What do you suggest I do?”
HZ: What do you think it is that makes Trevors good at advice-giving? Do you have to vet them to check that they will be good?
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: No, I don't. By virtue of the fact that they contacted me, then they are possessed with the confidence in their own ability, because it's clear you go on the website that it's a platform for people with a problem to ask for an answer to their problem. And so, they've contacted me saying, “I've love this idea and I've got lots of experience in X, so, you know, count me in.” So I don't think people with the name Trevor are particularly cleverer than anyone else.
HZ: But it rhymes, so it must be true.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Well, yeah, I mean, I get a lot of that, “Clever Trevor” from Ian Dury, but it's spelt wrong on the album. It's T-R-E-V-E-R and Clever is spelled C-L-E-V-O-R.
HZ: Oh, okay. That's a bit of fun.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: He switched the last vowel in each one round. So yeah, I don't think they're particularly clever than anyone else. But what it has done is made me think there's a lot of people out there, whatever the name, who when invited would be altruistic, would be happy to spend time trying to sort out other people's problems. And I just tapped into a group of people called Trevor – it could equally have been called Kevin.
HZ: Trevor was a top 40 baby name in England and Wales between the mid-1940s and the mid-1960s, peaking in 1964 with around 3,255 new Trevors. In Ireland, it hovered around the mid-50s from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, and in the USA it peaked in popularity in the 1990s, although it only barely made it into the top 60 names. In England and Wales, the name has been well out of the top 100 for the last few decades, and in 2025 only twelve new Trevors were registered.
HZ: Have you noticed any particular age concentration of Trevors, or is it all ages?
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: No, they're all older. Apart from the odd one: the American Trevor, he was in his late twenties. He is an entrepreneur, actually; a tech entrepreneur; but generally speaking, we're looking at 50+. And I think that's what gives them the confidence to say, “Yeah, I can help you with this, I've been managing property for 40 years, or I have been a lawyer for 50 years,” or, I've even got a neurosurgeon. So they've developed lots of experience and they're completely confident that when someone asks them a question, they don't have to look in a book. They can just go, "This is the answer," and type away on the keyboard. They know that they're not having to invest lots of time; they could answer 10 questions a week, and they still wouldn't take any of the time, or they just get the phone and go, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, boom,” and that's the answer, you know? It's a bit like going next door: the guy next door is a plumber and you've got a leak, you just say, "This thing's leaking; what do you think I should do?" And he'd say, "Oh, you just do this, that, and that." It's just like knocking on your neighbour's door, but you do it by email, and the person you're speaking to is called Trevor.
HZ: One of those Trevors is the Trevor you heard from earlier in the episode.
TREVOR MURPHY: My name is Trevor Murphy. I'm originally from Dublin in Ireland. I'm an engineer by trade, and I'm 44 years old.
HZ: How did you get involved with Ask Trev?
TREVOR MURPHY: I was just taking the piss. I just take things to the multimax, you know, to the point where they're probably not even funny anymore anymore, to just say, “What else can I do?” So I’m like, “Oh yeah, I've gotta join this Trevors site.” Then I come down and say, “Look, I told you there's a Trevor society!” And she [Trevor’s wife] was like, “You're ridiculous,” I say, “I'm joining this!” So I joined it. That's how it ended up. But that's not to demean what he's doing. What he's doing is actually quite a nice thing. He's got a lot of people together regardless of their name. And, you know, if you go through a lot of the people, they've some really, really good skills. And all these people are offering advice and I actually think it's a really beautiful thing. Maybe I’m demeaning it slightly by taking the piss, but you know, it is actually a really nice thing that he's done. Not that I'm taking the piss out of it, I'm, I'm really just doing it to annoy my wife. But if anyone did contact me to ask for advice, I'd be quite happy to do it anyway, you know?
HZ: What kind of advice are you giving out on there?
TREVOR MURPHY: The type nobody wants or needs. I'm an engineer, so I don't think any engineers want to contact me on any website and say, “Here, I have this engineering problem.” It's not gonna happen.
HZ: But when it does, you'll stop a bridge falling down.
TREVOR MURPHY: Oh yeah, I'll be there. I'll be there.
HZ: Yeah. It's a big deal.
TREVOR MURPHY: I'm waiting. I’m waiting by the phone every day. That call will come one day, I guarantee you.
HZ: Day or night – you can never sleep.
HZ: As well as giving free advice to anyone seeking it, Trevor Cunningham had another aim for AskTrev.com:
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: To rebrand the name. As well as wanting to help people, to try to reclaim the name, I think that was the pivotal thing, that I wanted to make Trevor a name that you don't normally associate with geeks and idiots. Because, Trevor always seems to be the character on TV or on film who's a nitwit; or if he is not a nitwit, he is a geek. Usually on comedy shows or, you know, a sitcom, Trevor was always odd. There's always something not quite right about the character, Trevor.
HZ: Why do you think that is? Why has Trevor been picked on like that as a name?
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: I have no idea. It's the strangest phenomenon. I'd really like to know how that came about. But, that is the case. So that's why I've got all these Trevors going, “Oh yeah, yes, I wanna reclaim that name. I want to associate the name Trevor with generosity and altruism.”
It's funny because in real life, no one ever said anything about my name. I've never felt ashamed of my name in real life, it was just another name – although it's extremely rare, there's very few Trevors about. Most people, if I say to them, “Name six Trevors, alive or dead,” they won't be able to; that's how rare it is.
HZ: Do you feel a kinship when you encounter another Trevor then?
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Yes. Yeah. I mean, I've encountered – in my entire life, I've encountered two.
HZ: Wow. You are rare birds.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. And strangely enough, they both work for the same company. But yeah, I mean, I'm 68, and in all those years I've only ever met two other Trevors.
TREVOR MURPHY: There was another Trevor in my estate I knew of. I didn't know him
that well, but I knew of him. When there's a Trevor about, word gets around, you know?
HZ: Oh yeah, the Trevor network.
TREVOR MURPHY: Yeah. That's it. Yeah. It's like a spidey sense.
HZ: So there wasn't like a kind of camaraderie or enmity to be the ultimate Trevor on the estate?
TREVOR MURPHY: No, it was more standoffish, more a tense affair.
HZ: I wonder how many kid Trevors there are around now.
TREVOR MURPHY: I'd say we're in decline. I'd say David Attenborough's gonna do a special on us now in about a year's time, talking about how we're endangered and he's doing appeal to the masses.
HZ: Yeah. Save Trevors!
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: I've updated my website really, it's like a memorial. It's the famous Trevors that have been and gone. I only did that last week.
HZ: And the reason he did that is: One of Trevor Cunningham's other interesting activities is collecting aeroplane sickbags - his collection features in a book, Sicko, by Elizabeth McCafferty. And when Trevor appeared on a TV show to talk about the sick bags, he met someone whose special interest is crisps.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: And I got chatting to her before we went on the programme, and after I mentioned Ask Trev in our conversation and she said, “My dad was called Trevor. He was such a lovely man.” And she started to tell me all about him and he sounded awesome. And he died about five years ago. And I said, “You know what? I'm gonna set up a memorial wall on the website and I'm gonna put your dad at the top.” So that's what I did. So the first person who appears on the memory thing, the roll of honour, if you like, is her dad/
HZ: Trevor Norman.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Oh, he's called Trevor Norman?
HZ: Yeah. Oh, that's really nice. Are there any Trevors in fiction or media where you are like, “That's a good Trevor”?
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Well, yeah, I mean Trevor McDonald.
HZ: A treasure of a Trevor.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. Trevor Nelson, he is good at what he does; Trevor Power, the actor; and then the inventor of the wind up radio, Trevor Bayliss.
HZ: That's good.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: And then there's Trevor Francis, the footballer; Trevor Sorbie, the hairdresser…
TREVOR MURPHY: I quite like Trevor Noah, the comedian. He's funny.
HZ: Yeah, he's a good Trevor.
TREVOR MURPHY: He is a quality Trevor. Yeah, yeah. He's a top tier Trevor.
HZ: A Triple-T.
TREVOR MURPHY: Yeah. Triple T. He has his own entrance now into the Trevor Society meeting.
HZ: Oh, Trevor Horn, the music producer.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Trevor Horn, music producer. Yeah. And there was Trevor Wilkinson. He invented a car called TVR.
HZ: You’ve got Trevor Eve.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Actor. Yeah. From Shoestring.
HZ: Shoestring!
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Remember that? God, I even remember the car he had. It was a Ford Cortina estate.
HZ: Oh, you’ve got Trevor of Trevor and Simon…
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: …A principal member of David Bowie's band, Trevor Bolder… I'm watching a thing on Apple TV at the moment called Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed –
HZ: Spoiler for just the first few minutes of episode 1: A mother smarting from the custody fight with her ex-husband cheers herself up with some online flirtation – and a little more – with a camboy.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: – the camera boy was called Trevor! They're using his name as though it's completely normal! I was like, “Oh my god!”
HZ: Representation at last!
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: But then he had to be a camera boy. He couldn't be a regular bloke. But, he wasn't a geek and he wasn't an idiot.
HZ: No. It wasn't his real name either.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Oh, wasn’t it?
HZ: No, it was his cam name, but he had another name.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Really? But, it would be nice if we could have a resurgence really, that would help.
HZ: Now you've gathered 140-odd Trevors, are you ever thinking “Maybe we should get all the Trevors together”?
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: That has been suggested to me, but logistics would be difficult. Maybe we could do a UK version of that.
HZ: Yeah. Where are most of your Trevors?
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: They're all over the UK, honestly, spread all over the place. One Trevor contacted me says, “It would be absolutely ace if we could get as many Trevors as possible to meet up in the village of Trevor, which is just near Llangollen in Wales.” Which is a brilliant idea. But you know, like I said, the logistics... I mean, it would be great, that.
HZ: Is Trevor a name that was chosen for you or that you chose for yourself?
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: You'd be pretty good to come out of the box and say, “Right, okay, from now on, you're gonna call me Trevor”! No: my mother called me Trevor after the ambulance man that drove her to the hospital, when she was in labour. So she obviously put a great deal of thought into what she was going to call me.
HZ: Really left it to the last minute. That's relatable.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: I mean, good god, you know, didn't even think about it.
HZ: Do you know why you are called Trevor?
TREVOR MURPHY: It was either that or Leonard. My mother, at the time she was picking the name, she was probably very close to giving birth at the time. But yeah, it was either that or Leonard. My father, now he's passed away, but he did say that she was actually gonna call me LeonARD, not LEONard. So that was even worse again. I think I'd take Trevor over LeonARD.
HZ: Could have been TrevOR.
TREVOR MURPHY: TrevoOR, yeah, yeah. TrevOR. Yeah. But I googled what the meaning of it was: the meaning is it's a Welsh village or large settlements. That's the name of the name. We'd always sneer at people that would call their kids you know, after locations, you know, “Here's Beijing” or whatever like that, you know? But actually look at my name: it's not even called the name of place. It's called a description of a place, a large village.
HZ: Would you recommend the name to other people?
TREVOR MURPHY: No, I wouldn't. No, I don't think so. No. No.
HZ: How did you find it, naming children yourself?
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: I've got two daughters and a son, and my wife said she always wanted to have a daughter called Natalie Claire. So had a child and it was a girl. So we went with Natalie Claire, which I was happy with because it's a nice, soft, gentle name and it's not too one way or the other, you know? And then we had a daughter and I wanted to find something a little bit interesting. So I remember going to the library – remember when we used to go to the library to study? – and got some name book on names, and we picked Tiffany.
HZ: You know, I made an episode about the name Tiffany a few years ago because it's a mediaeval name, but people will not believe that if you make a drama set in the past that anyone before the eighties could be called Tiffany.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: My daughter would be amazed to hear that. She absolutely loves her name.
HZ: Good. It's a very charming name, I think.
TREVOR CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. And there's not many other people with it, and people, Tiffy or Tiff. But yeah, she adores that name. And then I had a son and I just wanted to keep it ageless. And when he was born, which was in 1989, there was a small resurgence of the name Jack, so we called him Jack. His grandfather was called Jack too, so that all worked out very well. So I'd like to think that my kids are happy with their names and the choices we made.
HZ: How did you feel about it as your name growing up?
TREVOR MURPHY: Dunno, it's just a name, isn't it? Like your name is your name. You know that phrase, like you say a word so many times it loses all meaning and it's just an noise kind of a name? It's like that, isn't it, really to yourself like, and it kind of impacts everyone else more than yourself really. You never think about it. It's just a noise that you say every time you meet somebody, isn't it? I dunno, it never really affected me – other than that “Is Trevor ever getting up?” song. I didn't like them. That should be outlawed.
HZ: I've never heard one of those songs.
TREVOR MURPHY: You've never heard that? [sings] “Is Trevor ever getting up? Never in a month of Sundays.” No? You never heard that?
HZ: I quite like it.
TREVOR MURPHY: It must be an Irish thing, that.
HZ: Maybe it's just for Trevors.
TREVOR MURPHY: Maybe, yeah. Irish Trevors.
What do you think of your name?
HZ: I just found it a bit formless because of the lack of consonance. It's a bit like, Hllnnn. It's okay. I like the fact that my second name starts with Z. That's cool.
TREVOR MURPHY: Yeah. You’ve got two Zs in your name.
HZ: Yeah. Although people often leave out one or both. 'cause they're like, “That's impossible that a name could contain two.” But yeah, I don't particularly like it. I don't hate it. It's just sort of there.
TREVOR MURPHY: Yeah, I think that's the same for everybody, isn't it though?
HZ: I don’t know – some people actively hate them and then some people are like, “Oh no, I've got a good one.” Mine just, I feel like it's lacking a bit of energy, but so am I. So that's fair.
TREVOR MURPHY: Yeah. Yeah. I think Trevor’s lacking a lot of energy as well. I think it's just like… What's that bloody paint everyone's house is painted? Magnolia. That's what it is.
HZ: Do you think?
TREVOR MURPHY: If it was a colour, it would be magnolia.
HZ: Oh, I think it's got a bit more sass than that.
TREVOR MURPHY: Do you think?
HZ: Yeah, it's got a bit more like verve to it.
TREVOR MURPHY: Yeah… maybe.
HZ: Maybe everyone thinks their name is magnolia 'cause they're so used to it.
TREVOR MURPHY: Possibly, yeah, maybe that's it.
HZ: That was engineer Trevor Murphy, so if you do have engineering questions, look him up on AskTrev.com and he’ll be ready, so ready.
And you heard from Trevor Cunningham, founder of AskTrev.com, and the website oldierage.com, and author of the kids’ book The World’s Longest Bicycle.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…
anadromous, adjective, zoology: (of a fish) migrating up rivers from the sea to spawn. The opposite of ‘catadromous’.
Try using ‘anadromous’ in an email today.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
The music is by Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com and the experimental podcast Neutrino Watch, and the podcast we make together, Answer Me This.
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