And Valéry Larbaud’s passage on the name of Lolita in his Des prénoms féminins (1927) has often been quoted: “it is truly Spain which is best equipped in the Western world as concerns first names. She has those boxed up names, fitted with a set of diminutives capable of expressing all kinds of nuances: age, the degree of familiarity one has with the people involved… Lolita is a little girl; Lola is old enough to get married; Dolores is thirty years old; doña Dolores is sixty (…). One day, inspired by love, I whispered: Lola. And during the wedding night, I will have Lolita in my arms.”  This passage strangely prefigures the famous opening of Humbert’s narrative.