Heath Ledger

So I was wandering down from the bus stop this morning and noticed a poster for Terry Gilliam’s new movie, The Brothers Grimm. One of the stars of the movie is a chap called Heath Ledger who you may recall from such stellar movies as A Knight’s Tale and… er… well I can’t think of any others.



Anyway, I got to thinking… what sort of name is Heath? As far as I’m aware it’s just a large patch of open scrubland. So, I looked it up on dictionary.com as you do, and sure enough:

Any of various usually low-growing shrubs of the genus Erica and related genera, native to Europe and South Africa and having small evergreen leaves and small, colorful, urn-shaped flowers. Also called heather.
An extensive tract of uncultivated open land covered with herbage and low shrubs; a moor.

So Heath’s parents either named him after a plant, which is frankly girlie, or they named him after a bit of land. Which is just odd. I suspect, they simply made it up cos they thought it sounded nice.

As for his surname…

Well, anyway. That was my thought for the day. A bit wasted really wasn't it...