Opinion
I used to love my name, before Jeffrey ruined it
The Beatles’ Brian has made me hugely proud, but now there’s a much worse association
February 25, 2022 10:01
3 min read
The Beatles’ Brian has made me hugely proud, but now there’s a much worse association
February 25, 2022 10:01I was 15 years old when I discovered the Beatles. The Fab Four had actually split more than a decade earlier. However, until the early 1980s their music largely passed me by. I was too diverted by other giants of popular culture, namely, err, Duran Duran, to notice.
But then one morning a friend brought a Beatles album into school and suggested I have a listen. I was hooked. Soon, anything to do with the Beatles, or indeed Liverpool, became something of an obsession. When the same pal went to stay with her grandma on the Wirral, the very notion of breathing in the Merseyside air - even if it was the posh bit - was desperately exciting.
But perhaps most thrilling of all was discovering that I shared a surname with the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein. Now I had a real connection to the band. It may have been as flimsy as star dust but who cared? Not me. After all it was "Mr Epstein" as John, George, Ring and Macca would call him, who signed up this group of unknown Liverpool lads after watching them play in the Cavern club one November lunchtime in 1961.
Epstein is, of course, an unremarkable name in the cholent belt of north Manchester where I live. The best it does is trigger staccato questions: Are you related to the wine/furniture people? (No and no.) Is your cousin Sylvia/Marion/Jonathan? (Again, no.)
Yet beyond the Jewish community, the name isn't routinely familiar. Not unless you were a fan of 20th century portrait sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein or knew your Beatles history. And for Jeremy Corbyn, it was clearly an exotic foreign name, as he infamously pronounced it Epshteen.
Once I discovered Brian Epstein I made hay with the implied connection, often referencing the Beatles' manager to help those non-Jewish strangers who had difficulty spelling my name. Ah, the fathomless joy of saying "as in Brian" by way of explanation, as I once did when introduced to radio presenter and legendary professor of pop, Paul Gambaccini. "Are you related?" he asked with cautious wonder. To which I could only offer an enigmatic smile (though Gambo may well have thought I had a touch of indigestion).
Even setting Brian – our Brian – aside, there's been something else quite magical about my surname. Working as a journalist, its been a source of nachus to see my Epstein byline. Sometimes I would stare at it and wonder what my immigrant great-grandparents would have thought. What's more, since I don't look especially Jewish, the name often offers a slow wink to anyone else whose heritage may be aced by their physiognomy.
The name Epstein is one of the oldest Ashkenazi Jewish family names. It's thought to have derived from the German town of Eppstein, in Hesse; the place-name itself probably derived from the Gaulish apa (meaning water) and the German stein (stone).
However, look the word up online in the so-called Urban Dictionary and you'll stumble across a far less palatable definition.
Here Epstein is explained as "a perverted billionaire ****head who used his money to get away with ******* young girls".
This is what happens when a surname of which you have been so proud suddenly turns toxic.
Once the horrific crimes of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein came to light, refuelled by the Ghislaine Maxwell trial and now through the twists of Prince Andrew’s now settled court case, the name was out there - mauled by television announcers and commentators as they rightly spat out their disdain.
I share their view, as well as sympathy for his - so hard to say Epstein's - countless victims. Indeed when I'm on television or radio myself and this evergreen, ever-gangrous story surfaces, I have to rather pathetically splutter that he and I are in no way related.
Yet of course such an attempt at separation has no truck with the pondlife on twitter. Having this now notorious Jewish surname means I've inevitably been a target for the antisemites who lurk in the sewers of social media. If I make a comment, say, about Israel, there are the inevitable barbed references to Jeffrey Epstein.
The only irony is that after years of mispronunciation I finally find myself being - correctly - introduced as Epsteen rather than Epstine (pne This Morning presenter was so sure she'd forget the pronunciation it was written as Epsteeen on the autocue). It's scant comfort.
Hopefully, in time, my surname will fade from its association with the warped Amercan financier who killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges and whose actions damaged the lives of so many.
Meantime, I’ll think instead of the softly spoken young Jewish businessman whose discovery of four lads from Liverpool brought so much that is enriching and glorious to the world. Epstein , after all, is only a name. Like all names, it's what you make of it that counts.