The name 'Kirrin'

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lovingcup
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by lovingcup »

Having just started to re-read all my FF books after a break of a couple of years, I've been asking myself the same question! I'm sure in one book, all the children refer to themselves as Kirrins, but Julian/Dick/Anne's mother is referred to as Mrs. Barnard elsewhere. Are the two mothers sisters?
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by Lucky Star »

I think the whole "Barnard" thing was just an error by Enid Blyton. Throughout the course of her career she made a number of "bloopers". Understandabke when you consider how much she wrote and thus how many character biographies she had to remember.
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by Rob Houghton »

Merged with an older thread.

No doubt this subject has come up time without number, but I couldn't find a thread about it!

I was interested to see that in Enid Blyton's Magazine No8 Vol 3 (Apri 13th - 26th 1955) a little girl named Rosalind Jackson asks Enid a question about the Famous Five's surname (as well as asking that Enid Blyton keep writing Famous Five books 'as long as you live' ;-)

Enid's answer is interesting, as it sounds like this was the first time she reveals the surnames of all the Famous Five as being Kirrin. Is this the first time she ever revealled this?

She writes -

'You have asked me a question that hundreds of children ask. So now I will give the answer and set everyone's mind at rest. The surname of the four cousins ; George, Julian, Dick and Anne, is KIRRIN. That's easy to remember, isn't it, because of Kirrin Island. Please don't ask me what Timmy, the dog's surname is!"

8)
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by timv »

I've always taken the 'definitive' use of the children's surnames by Enid to be in 'Finniston Farm' where they arrive at the farm and the twins, the 'Harries', introduce them to their mother as 'The Kirrins'. The twins' mother Mrs Philpott is apparently a friend of Aunt Fanny's and Aunt F sent the children to her farm to help out with her money problems, so she would know what their real surname is.
In the first book, Julian and co's father says that Uncle Quentin is his brother - thus he and Quentin definitely have the same surname. (As it is 'Kirrin', did the family originally come form this village?) The island and what else is left of the former 'family estate' (ie Kirrin Farm) has however been inherited by Aunt Fanny so it comes from her family. It is only later that Enid mentions Julian and co's mother and Aunt Fanny as sisters - which could be a slip (easy to do when writing in a hurry) or a sign that two sisters had married two brothers.
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by Chrissie777 »

timv wrote: It is only later that Enid mentions Julian and co's mother and Aunt Fanny as sisters - which could be a slip (easy to do when writing in a hurry) or a sign that two sisters had married two brothers.
Yes, that sounds reasonable!
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by Nick »

With all the changes that the publishers make to Enids work year-on-year, its these little inconsistencies that I would like to see addressed.
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by Rob Houghton »

Chrissie777 wrote:
timv wrote: It is only later that Enid mentions Julian and co's mother and Aunt Fanny as sisters - which could be a slip (easy to do when writing in a hurry) or a sign that two sisters had married two brothers.
Yes, that sounds reasonable!
Of course, this is quite possible! :-D

My nan, Doris Sutton married William Webster, and her brother Harry Sutton married William's sister Jessica Webster. 8) 8)
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by Courtenay »

My dad's two uncles, Bill and Ern Rule, married two sisters, Dot and Edna Ford. 8)

Mind you, as others have noted, for Kirrin Island/Castle to be on Fanny's side of the family, as we're originally told, she was presumably a Kirrin by birth as well. Maybe she and J, D & A's mother were descended from the richer line of the family that held the title to the island, while Quentin and the other three's father were from a less prestigious branch? Provided there are enough branches of one family descended through the male lines, it's possible for members to be only distantly related but still share the same surname.

That said, I do get the feeling that it's really just a case of Enid not thinking the family relationships through clearly enough in the first place (i.e. whose family the island belonged to, which of George's parents was the sibling of which of J, D & A's parents, and who would or wouldn't have the surname Kirrin), contradicting herself several times without realising at first, and then just dropping the question! :wink:
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by Wolfgang »

Or the Bernard surname in "Five get into a fix"...
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Kirrin Island ownership history

Post by Hayleymoomin »

Merged with an older topic.

Have just started 're reading the famous 5 series...

Kirrin island I believe was inherited by George from her mother and had been in the family for years....but surely Mr and Mrs kirrin were married therefore shouldn't the island have been given the name of whatever aunt Fannys maiden name was...unless she and Quentin shared the same surname of kirrin...

Or am I getting confused and the families surname is something completely different and kirrin is the place name.....

Help!!!

I joined here last year but have only now got back into my books and this site:-)
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by timv »

I've usually assumed that 'Kirrin Island' was named after the adjacent mainland place not its owners, and that Julian, Dick and Anne's father and Uncle Quentin were the sons of a 'Mr Kirrin' . (Logically there should be some remark when J D and A's parents tell them at the start of the first book that they are going to stay in a place with the same name as the family, eg that 'originally we came from there', but at this point Enid had not thought much about the details and was possibly only contemplating one or two books in the series.) Aunt Fanny's father or mother was the owner of the local 'estate' including the island, its castle, Kirrin Cottage, and the farm that appears in the second book; by Aunt Fanny's time very little of this was left. This fits the frequent 'children find a treasure to restore the lost family fortunes' book storyline of adventure books.

But it is anyone's guess whether Enid meant Fanny's family to be another branch of the 'Kirrin' family, if she ever thought about this at all - though it would be logical for the estate's owners to have the same name as their location. The later reference to Aunt Fanny being a sister of Julian and co's mother may just have been Enid getting a bit confused! The name 'Kirrin' was probably one that Enid thought up as I have never come across it, but it was probably meant to sound a bit unusual and vaguely Cornish , ie influenced by the ancient Cornish language which was linked to Welsh not English (most contemporary holiday stories being set in Cornwall).
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by pete9012S »

Julian's father was Uncle Quentin's brother,yet look at my signature and see what he says about Kirrin!!!!
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by Courtenay »

timv wrote:The name 'Kirrin' was probably one that Enid thought up as I have never come across it, but it was probably meant to sound a bit unusual and vaguely Cornish , ie influenced by the ancient Cornish language which was linked to Welsh not English (most contemporary holiday stories being set in Cornwall).
That's an interesting thought, but I'm not so sure — when the Five visit Cornwall in Five Go Down to the Sea, they're famously labelled "furriners" because the closest they get to being Cornish is J, D and A having a "great-aunt who lived in Cornwall all her life". If Enid intended the Kirrin family to be Cornish in origin, that would have been the place to say it. Also, her invented Cornish names in that book are very much in line with the "Tre, Pol and Pen" saying that Julian quotes at the start of the book — Penruthlan, Tremannon etc. — whereas Kirrin doesn't sound much like a real Cornish place name at all. Perhaps Enid just wanted an unusual and slightly exotic sounding name for George and her island and castle?

As for the puzzle about whether it was George's father's or mother's family that originally owned the land and why it is that both families seem to have the same surname, I get the feeling that's a mystery Enid never bothered to straighten out in her own head and perhaps we shouldn't either!! :lol: :wink:
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by Hayleymoomin »

Ahhh a whole thread on This!!! Fantastic. Obviously I know the books aren't real and are purely from Enids imagination but I love exploring them like this :-)
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Re: The name 'Kirrin'

Post by pete9012S »

Yes,I too love threads like this! :D
November 29, 2007 – Fiona says:

This ridiculously complex riddle has confused me for years. The facts: In book 1 Julian etc's un-named father gets in touch with his brother Quentin. In the same book we discover George, Fanny and Quentin are all Kirrins, but the name appears to have been from Fanny's family as they owned Kirrin Island and Kirrin farm etc. In subsequent books all four cousins are called Kirrin. In ONE book Julian etcs mother is named Mrs Barnard. In ONE book Quentin refers to Julian's mother as Fanny's sister. Ok, there may have been cousin's marrying, or women being widowed or any number of far fetched reasons, none of which are stated in the book. Wouldn't it have been easier for George and her mother to take Uncle Quentin's surname, and Julian's family to take his father's surname. But leave Kirrin island as such - and we could still have it stated that it belonged to Fanny - who's maiden name was Kirrin. Or have Julian's father be Fanny's brother and Quentin took his wife's name because of the land ownership. There seems to be several ways to have written the books without such confusion, however as brilliant as EB was, she was human and made errors. As she was churning out over 10,000 words a day I don't imagine she had time to thoroughly proof read all her work.
http://www.enidblyton.net/talk-about-bl ... html?id=37" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Good points - well made (for those that have read and enjoyed The Famous Five Books and who also like a good mystery.)

I'm not sure what I made of it all reading the books when young.I do remember being extremely confused by the Barnard debacle though aged about nine or ten!

See also:
The Surname Debate
The Surname Debate[edit]
Jul/Aug 2006[edit]
Since it is not clear what surname the four children bear, and it is scarcely an issue in the books, couldn't we just list the characters without surnames, as they appear in the books? And alter the linked stubs from (e.g.) "Julian Kirrin" to "Julian (Famous Five)". Myopic Bookworm 16:53, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
The question is only of the surname of Julian, Dick and Anne; George's is explicitly stated many times. Since both names are referred to in the books, I don't see the point of completely removing the information, as it does not take up much of the article and is a point of interest. Whether the most plausible surname is Kirrin or Barnard is debatable (Kirrin was listed as it seems to be the most popularly accepted and, as far as I know, the name used in the television adaptations), but it is not Bannard, as the article had previously stated. And I 17:32, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
No, I wouldn't want to remove the information, but listing the characters as "Julian Kirrin" etc. seems to foreclose the debate. (And book-purists will not take kindly to having the TV series taken as canonical.) I'd refer to them by first name, and keep the note about surname. Myopic Bookworm 09:08, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough point, I must have misread. And I 14:48, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
In Five go to Billycock Hill, the five are introduced as "Julian Kirrin, Dick Kirrin, Anne Kirrin, and George Kirrin, their cousin - and their dog Timothy"
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.7.47.195 (talk) 05:06, 18 March 2007 (UTC).
Feb 2007[edit]
In a review of Five Get Into a Fix on enidblyton.net[1] the reviewer, Keith Robinson, says "I've been told that in the original books Julian's mother is referred to as Mrs Barnard. There's no mention of her name in the later version I have, and I have to assume it's been altered due to the fact that it's a glaring error on Blyton's part—for as we all know, Julian's father is Uncle Quentin's brother, which makes both families Kirrin".
I believe that the assertion ...Julian's father is Uncle Quentin's brother... is substantiated in Five on a Treasure Island, so it appears that the surname of all the children is Kirrin, and Blyton made a mistake in FGIAF which was later corrected. Does anyone have the relevant editions of FGIAF so this could be substantiated? RichardEll 11:09, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
The following note was taken from the The_Famous_Five_(characters) article on 26.02.2006 RichardEll 21:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC) There is debate about whether Julian, Dick and Anne share George's surname of Kirrin (as shown in Five on Finniston Farm), which would imply that their father was brother to Uncle Quentin, or whether their surname is Barnard (as their mother is referred to as "Mrs Barnard" in Five Get into a Fix). However, it seems unlikely that George's surname could have been Kirrin, because it is explained in one of the stories that Kirrin Island belonged to George's mother, who then made a gift of it to George. So Kirrin would have been Aunt Fanny's maiden name. Referring to Uncle Quentin as Professor Kirrin seems to have been an error in the seventies TV series.
To complicate matters further, it's not that unusual for a man to take his wife's surname (or combine them) when she brings property into the family. Maintaining the name is important in some circles. So Kirrin could well be Quentin's surname and not his brother's. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:10, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
In the first book of the series, "Kirrin" is given as the name of George's mother's family - the island and the cottage are named for her ancestors, not her husband's. So I always thought that George's surname was not Kirrin, since it would be unlikely that Uncle Quentin would change his surname to his wife's. Since Julian's mother is Mrs Barnard, I assumed that Quentin's name must also be Barnard unless Quentin and his brother had different fathers. So surely George must also be a Barnard? 79.179.62.156 (talk) 20:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
https://www.google.co.uk/#q=kirrin+barnard" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Last edited by pete9012S on 14 Jun 2017, 22:32, edited 2 times in total.
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