Ursula- from the Latin, meaning “little bear.”

Ursula would probably be a panda, because she too is a docile creature who likes to eat her greens. She’s often tried to get a vegetarian society started at school, but one look at Fiona usually causes her to lose heart. At the weekend, Ursula volunteers at a stray dogs’ and cats’ home, and she’s often managed to rope Laura into going with her. Hopefully, this will give Laura the opportunity to be proud of something that happened in the last decade for once.

Veronica- from the Latin, meaning “True image,”

Unlike most of her classmates, Veronica more than lives up to her name- she’s a very talented photographer. More talented than the headteacher would have liked, in fact- it was Veronica who got those pictures of him and the Head of Geography. It probably says a lot about Veronica’s honesty that she didn’t try to blackmail the headteacher, instead choosing to send the photos to everyone else in the school the second she got them. We should all have such integrity.

Winona- from the Sioux, meaning “firstborn daughter.”

Quintana does not want to hear any of Winona’s whining.

Xanthe- from the Greek, meaning “fair haired.”

According to stereotypes, blonde women are all dimwitted bimbos. You might expect Xanthe to be offended by this belief, but in fact she encourages it in everyone she knows. It makes the look on their faces once they’ve realised that Xanthe has utterly outwitted them and stabbed them in the back so much more satisfying.

(Word of advice- never play cards with Xanthe. You will regret it. And possibly have to remortgage your house.)

Yolanda- from the Spanish, meaning “violet.”

Extracts of violets can be used to treat asthma and insomnia. This isn’t much use to Yolanda, though, because she’s never had either of those. In fact, she’s never been sick a day in her life. She sees any kind of ill health as a sign of weakness. She insists that you just have to exercise properly and have the right attitude. She says that you have only yourself to blame if your body lets you down. And if she says that to her more sickly classmates one more time, they’re going to work out how to infect her with the bubonic plague.

Zoë- from the Greek, meaning “life.”

And “life” is exactly what Zoë’s classmates say she should have got for what she did to that supply teacher. Zoë’s defence is that the woodwork room is full of dangerous equipment, and sending in somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing is asking for trouble. The rest of the class maintain that people with much longer hair than said teacher have spent time in the woodwork room without their ponytails being caught in the sander. Of course, none of those people happened to yell at Zoë for a full ten minutes because her skirt was an inch too short.

Illustration:  http://camelwithout.deviantart.com/art/Class-of-2015-558398077?ga_submit_new=10%253A1441467997

Niamh- from the Irish, meaning “bright.”

This is a little unfortunate, because Niamh is the sort of girl who falls for chain letters and Nigerian scams. For the last two years, she’s been breathlessly telling her classmates that if you can’t cover your entire face with your hand, it means you have cancer. So far, none of them have let her in on the joke, but honestly, it probably wouldn’t matter even if they did. Niamh would probably just decide that the conspiracy for the promotion of small hands had got to them, too.

Orla- from the Gaelic, meaning “princess.”

And, indeed, Orla has a tendency to throw tantrums whenever things don’t go exactly her way. Like when Amy was elected Head Girl instead of her. Orla took that as a sign that each of the other hundred and ninety-nine girls in the Sixth Form had a personal grudge against her, as opposed to a sign that, well, there were a hundred and ninety-nine other girls in the Sixth Form. Anyway, Orla decided that they were all just jealous. It’s not clear what of.

Paula- from the Latin, meaning “small.”

Paula is six foot tall and beats up smaller kids. Some parents just like to tempt fate.

Quintana- from the Spanish, meaning “the fifth girl.”

This, as you might imagine, has caused no end of resentment in Quintana as she’s grown up. She spends a great deal of time looking for ways to punish her four older sisters for the crime of being born before her. Said sisters often find notes pinned to their classroom door telling everybody their bra size, which boys they fancy, and the details of that time they wet themselves at the garden centre when they were six. Quintana is truly merciless.

Unfortunately, Quintana has so far failed to take into account the fact that she also has two younger sisters with equally insulting names, and they are plotting. Ooh, are they plotting.

Rachel- from the Hebrew, meaning “ewe.”

Ewes have four stomachs, but Rachel must have about twenty to deal with some of the crap she eats. It’s not just a matter of going down to McDonald’s more than once a week- it’s a matter of eating pickled onions for breakfast and eight Mars bars for dinner. Her teachers try desperately to point her towards the Healthy Eating queue at lunch, but she usually only goes there for the slush machines. Her favourite flavour is blue.

Saoirse- from the Irish, meaning “freedom.”

Saoirse hasn’t told anyone this, but as soon as school finishes for the summer, she plans to disappear. She’ll hit the road and travel through Europe, with nothing but her backpack and her imagination. She’ll send her parents a postcard now and then, so they’ll know she’s alright, but other than that, she’ll be carving out a whole new life, entirely her own. She can’t wait.

Theresa- from the Greek, meaning “harvest.”

This is odd, because Theresa is actually banned from the Harvest Festival church service because of what happened when she was in Year Seven. In her defence, it probably wouldn’t have been such a complete disaster if Reverend Underwood hadn’t developed a habit of sneakily helping himself to the wine from the donations table (rationalising that the poor were better off keeping away from alcohol anyway). One sip of the bottle Theresa had taken from under her dad’s desk, and the congregation were treated to a sermon on that well-known book of the Bible, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Hayley- from the English, meaning “meadow.”

Bambi’s mother once said, “You must never rush out onto the meadow. There might be danger.” Unfortunately, she wasn’t around to say it to Hayley, who rushes out everywhere. If she was attacked by a Great White Shark, her first instinct would be to cuddle it. Since there aren’t any Great White Sharks around at the moment, she makes do with setting fire to bits of paper in Chemistry and running across busy roads to meet her friends. Hayley’s classmates appreciate her spontaneity, but they are also running a betting pool on what will cause her inevitable gruesome death.

Ivy- from the English, meaning “faithfulness.”

This makes Ivy’s habit of stealing her friends’ boyfriends even odder. She says she doesn’t mean to. There she’ll be, minding her own business, when her best mate will suddenly bring a handsome boy to her table, and, well, Ivy will just lose her heart. She will also conveniently forget about her own boyfriend, stolen from her last best friend only to be callously discarded. Some say that Ivy does this because of a subconscious desire to prove that she’s the smartest and most attractive one in the group, but Ivy maintains that she’s just a romantic. A romantic who has thoroughly traumatised half the boys in town.

Jacqueline- from the French, meaning “supplanter.”

Jacqueline has probably taught more History lessons this year than her actual History teacher. The teacher will barely get more than two sentences out before Jacqueline interrupts with a new and fascinating fact about the Tudor Era. Did you know that Elizabeth the First was famous for flashing her boobs at her entire court? Did you know that Henry the Seventh’s wife used to wear cheap knock-off jewellery because her husband was too cheap to buy her the real stuff? The class will be mesmerised, and the teacher will have lost them for the rest of the lesson. This wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that they’re meant to be studying the Second World War.

Kathleen- from the Greek, meaning “pure.”

So is the cocaine she sells outside the school gates. Enough said.

Laura- from the Spanish, meaning “crowned with laurels.”

In Ancient Rome, war heroes were crowned with laurel wreaths to symbolise their achievements. Laura has a sash covered in Brownie Badges instead. Her classmates have gently tried to tell her that this is not an appropriate thing for a seventeen-year-old girl to wear, but the heartbreakingly proud look on her face when she tells them the story of how she won her Friend To Animals badge is just too much to bear. We all need something to make us feel good about ourselves.

Madeline- from the Hebrew, meaning “woman from Magdala”

Magdala is a place mentioned in the Bible. Madeline herself was not mentioned in the Bible, but try telling her that. You’ll just get a long, condescending lecture about how you’re blinded by your sinful nature, and if only you’d give your heart to Jesus, you’d see that Madeline is right about everything and the greatest person who ever lived. Interestingly, Madeline has been kicked out of three local churches for getting on the vicars’ nerves, which is probably about as close as anyone gets to literally trying the patience of a saint.

Amy- from the French, meaning “beloved”

More than anybody else in the class of 2015, Amy believes that names are very significant things. And can it be a coincidence that her own name means “beloved”? Of course not. The class just wouldn’t be the same without her. She’s always organising things, helping people with their problems, and working hard to get everyone to do their best. She always has something interesting to say and something important to give. In fact, Amy may very well be the most well-liked member of the class.

Amy’s classmates don’t quite agree with this version of events, but, as Amy says, no-one asked them.

Beatrice- from the Italian, meaning “traveller.”

If by “traveller,” you mean “gets lost a lot,” then this is pretty accurate. Beatrice not only has no sense of direction, but a ridiculously short attention span to boot. The last time her mother sent her down to the corner shop to buy milk, she was gone for five hours and eventually turned up on a farm two miles away, sitting on top of a hay-bale and looking dreamily up at the sky. Apparently, she’d vaguely remembered that she’d been told to do something related to cows, and after that, one thing led to another.

Chandra- from the Sanskrit, meaning “moon.”

This may or may not be the reason why Chandra, at the age of nine, managed to convince herself that she was secretly a werewolf. It all started the morning she found a reddish-brown stain on her pyjama top, and decided it must have been the blood of one of her victims. Her parents and brother told her that the stain looked a lot like chocolate, and that it hadn’t been a full moon last night anyway, but Chandra chose to ignore this. Some people say you can defeat a werewolf with silver bullets, or by shouting its human name three times, but Chandra was only cured of werewolfism when her mother threatened to stop letting her read Goosebumps books.

Deborah- from the Hebrew, meaning “bee.”

Some people say that, if you don’t tell immediately the bees in your hives about all the births, deaths and marriages that take place in your house, they will stop producing honey out of sheer spite. Deborah can relate to this. When her friend Theresa’s older brother got married, she spent a month demanding an invitation, followed by five months of demanding to know why she wasn’t invited, whether or not she and Theresa were still friends, and if Theresa actually had a whole other group of friends with whom she laughed at Deborah behind her back. Theresa’s protests (that the wedding was taking place in Thailand, and that Deborah had only ever met her brother twice) fell on deaf ears.

Emma- from the German, meaning “universal.”

Emma says that the universe is millions of years old, expanding in every direction, and no human being will ever see more than a tiny fraction of what it has to offer unless– and this is important- they take a whole lot of mind-expanding drugs. Not everybody in her class follows Emma’s logic, but she generally seems cheerful, at least when she’s not being attacked by invisible spiders.

Fiona- from the Scottish, meaning “white.”

In China and Korea, white is the colour that symbolises death. Fiona keeps up this tradition by killing as many insects as she possibly can. Whenever a moth, a spider, or a bumblebee comes into the room, Fiona lets out a scream of terror and punches it to smithereens, much to the horror of her more tender-hearted classmates. Fiona usually responds by asking if they want to get the plague, much to the horror of her History teacher.

Geraldine- from the English, meaning “rules by the spear.”

Actually, Geraldine rules by the Facebook group. She has at least five different accounts under separate names, and she uses them to ask… questions. Simple questions. Questions that require answers. Questions that shouldn’t threaten anybody with nothing to hide. And if some of those questions lead to half the school wishing for another girl’s death for her supposed misdeeds, detailed in the “Is our school harbouring a known terrorist?” group, it’s certainly not Geraldine’s intention.