Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151101035254/@comment-5918438-20151226181647

Now, on the topic of Petronella:

Osgood: What's your first name? Doctor: Basil. (long pause) Osgood: Petronella. Doctor: Let's just, er, stick with what we had. I need to ask you, because it's important, because it might matter. Osgood: What's important? Doctor: Which one are you? Human or Zygon? ......... ......... Doctor: Zygella? Osgood: Osgood! Doctor: But which one of you— Both Osgoods: Osgood! Osgood: It doesn't matter which of us is which. Osgood: All that matters is that Osgood lives. Osgood: And nothing's going to stop us! Doctor: You're a credit to your species, Petronella Osgood. Osgood: No, Basil. Osgood: We're a credit to both of them.

The name "Petronella" is only ever used in the same context as "Basil". In order to consider "Petronella" anything other than something she came up with in the moment in response to Basil, we would have to accept Basil as the Doctor's true first name. In the final scene, the Doctor calls her Petronella, and she calls him Basil in return. You don't have to go very far into subtext to realise that the script really wants to get across that she was lying about her first name, and we still don't know that, just like we still don't know which of the original two Osgoods is the one that survived.

Yes, it would make things easier for us if we accepted Petronella as her true name, but there is simply no basis for that at this time. At the moment, it's only used in Inversion, and it's not clear at all, given the only context in which it was spoken, that this was her real name (in fact the script goes to lengths to make sure we know it's not). However. If a story (story, not anything out-of-universe, written not by the writers of the story, but quite possibly by some confused BBC and/or BF employees who just didn't get that whole Petronella thing) uses that as her first name, honestly, unambiguously, then we can discuss this again, and possibly move the page accordingly.