How did James Bond get his name?
Over the course of a big screen career that’s spanned more than 60 years, James Bond has become famed for wearing an immaculately tailored tuxedo, sipping a shaken-not-stirred martini, getting the girl, wielding bespoke gadgets, and saving the world from imminent destruction.
Ever since Sean Connery first introduced himself in Dr. No, the character has been one of the most famous on the face of the planet, with the moniker now part of the pop culture fabric. It’s impossible to imagine 007 operating under any other name, which could have easily been the case had Ian Fleming not been hit by a bout of inspiration hailing from the most unexpected of places.
The various traits behind the debonair operative were drawn from many places, with Fleming’s cousin through marriage and regular golf partner Christopher Lee prime among them, but settling on what his new literary creation would be called followed a regular template set by the book series in taking its cues from the author’s surroundings.
Before sitting down to begin work on what would eventually be Casino Royale at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, Fleming’s soft spot for birdwatching ended up providing his greatest source of inspiration. One such book he used to further his hobby was titled Birds of the West Indies, authored by an ornithology expert who went by the name of James Bond.
Even though it would have been quite the eureka moment for Fleming when he began writing his first book in 1952, he would have had no idea what was in store for his freshly-named hero. A decade later, Bond was already etched into the history books on the big screen, which would give rise to one of the longest-running and lucrative movie franchises of all time.
Fleming even thanked the wife of the real-life James Bond for his inadvertent contributions when they met, telling her: “It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born.” No offence to the writer behind The Birds of Mt. Desert Island, but it didn’t take long for him to become the second most renowned.
Fleming was happy to credit him, though, once bestowing him with a signed copy of You Only Live Twice inscribed with the message: “To the real James Bond, from the thief of his identity.” He even offered to have the door swing both ways, although his tongue was planted firmly in cheek while doing so.
Bond’s wife regaled the story of how Fleming told her that “I can only offer your James Bond unlimited use of the name Ian Fleming,” in the case that “perhaps one day he will discover some particularly horrible species of bird which he would like to christen in an insulting fashion.”
