Those of you who watch Community will be aware of the power of a name to express something; within the show, to ‘Britta’ something means to ruin it, inspired by the character Britta’s tendency to screw things up. Our language is packed with references like this. Some are simply alliterative; there is no real woman behind ‘negative Nancy’, for example. But other idioms of this type are the legacies of real-life figures whose names remain in the vernacular today. When you say you’re feeling as happy as Larry, you are actually referring to a real person. But who is Larry, and why do we say we’re as happy as him?

Some claim that no original Larry existed, since ‘Larrikin’ is a slang term, meaning a hooligan or a yob, which originated in Cornwall and then moved to Australia and New Zealand. It’s possible to see how this meaning could transfer to the sense of having a good time, and how ‘Larry’ became associated with it. The earliest printed use of the phrase ‘happy as Larry’ actually comes from G.L. Meredith, a New Zealand writer who could very feasibly have heard slang like ‘larrikin’. If ‘Larry’ is just a shortening of ‘larrikin’, however, there’s no obvious reason to capitalise it, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that there was a real Larry behind it: Larry Foley.

Larry Foley was an Australian boxer in the 19th century, who retired aged 32 having never lost a fight. If that’s not enough motivation for feeling pretty cheerful, he also won a hefty sum of prize money after his final match in the 1870s. The phrase ‘happy as Larry’ first began to appear in print at the same time, and some sources even claim that a newspaper report at the time gave their account of Foley’s final victory the headline ‘Happy as Larry’. Put all of this evidence together and Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got yourself an idiom. This, however, only raises more questions. Why does having Bob for an uncle make everything right?

“In some cases we’re guilty of inventing people behind our idioms.”

Well, according to a song written in 1931 by John P. Long, Uncle Bob ‘knows what to do’ and ‘will look after you.’ Long wrote the song for Florrie Forde, who at the time was one of the most renowned music hall performers. There is an earlier recorded use of the phrase as the name of a musical revue in 1924 that was billed in Scottish newspapers as Bob’s Your Uncle, and it’s likely that the two were connected. It’s easy to see how a song extolling Uncle Bob’s good sense gave rise to an idiom expressing satisfaction with the state of things, and through Florrie Forde’s influence as well as its publication in the press, it’s entirely possible the phrase would grow widespread enough to become an idiom.

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In some cases we’re guilty of inventing people behind our idioms. Although we don’t capitalise it, there is a theory that ‘nosey parker’ is in fact a real person: Matthew Parker. Parker was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559 to 1575 and generally considered to be inoffensive and well-meaning, although he was also known for inquiring into Church matters and inspecting the activities of the clergy. This wasn’t appreciated at the time, and Parker was viewed as overly-inquisitive by many of his opponents. Archbishop Parker, who had a prebendary at Ely Cathedral, is also said to have had a rather strong nose, which might have led to the nickname ‘nosey Parker’.

There is, however, no evidence to suggest any actual links between Archbishop Parker and nosey parker, especially as the phrase appears to date from the end of the 19th century, not the 16th. In fact, it was only at the end of the 19th century that ‘nosey’, which originally just meant ‘in possession of a large nose’, even came to mean ‘prying or inquisitive’. Those making accusations of nosiness would not have even known the word, and were unlikely to make any connection between Parker’s nose and his inquisitive habits. Instead, it probably arose from the notion of sticking one’s nose into others’ business, which became shortened simply to ‘nosey’. The origin of ‘Parker’ is more unclear, but could be connected to its original meaning of park-keeper. The park-keepers often had a habit of spying on courting couples in the parks, leading them to be associated with nosiness and therefore leading to the phrase ‘nosey parker’.

Between boxers, nepotism, and big noses, these phrases certainly provide our language with a colourful cast of characters. So be careful what you become known for, lest you become immortalised in an unflattering idiom like poor old Archbishop Parker