What's in a Name?

I am regularly asked where did your name come from? So here's the story....

I'd been thinking about starting up a toy shop specialising in traditional wooden toys and needed a name pretty quickly to get the ball rolling as I was due to go out to the biggest Toy Fair in Europe at Nuremberg in a few weeks time!

One sunny winter morning lying in bed reading it all came together....

My son had always loved the Beatrix Potter books, and we knew many of them by heart! One of his favourites which we had just finished reading was Jeremy Fisher who had a friend Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise....

I had also recently read about the oldest Tortoise in the world - who was called "Harriet" and I took this to be a sign that Ptolemy Toys could be the name for my new venture!

It was also around the time in 2006 of the massively popular Restoration BBC series presented by Griff Rhys Jones and Ptolemy Dean - so many people had heard the name Ptolemy in their living rooms, and had started to be expert at pronouncing this unusual name....

The decision was made Ptolemy pronounced with a silent "P" .....tolemy toys sounded good to me....

Further research showed us that Ptolemy also had a wonderful link to education and learning, Claudius Ptolemy was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer and poet who lived in AD90 - AD168. This tied into our love of traditional wooden educational toys that encourage children to explore and learn for themselves. Our name was well and truly born!


My lovely neighbour helped with the logo - have you seen how cleverly she designed P T into the tortoise shell? We've had fun with him too, he looks great in his little Santa hat for Christmas! Thankfully Christmas gifts from Ptolemy are not sent via Tortoise Delivery!

Ptolemy Toys is a wonderful business we love seeing little childrens' - well some parents and grandparents too if the truth be told - eyes light up as they walk into our magical shop in Brackley South Northamptonshire ...

Of course we also have lots of customers who come to us because they have called their sons Ptolemy -well it's almost too good to be true to have a toy shop named after you!

Check us out online or come and visit us in Brackley.