Booker Prize names its trophy Iris after public vote

The new Booker Prize trophy has been named ’Iris’ after the Booker Prize Foundation launched a competition in January 2023 inviting the public to suggest names.

Over 800 people suggested names, which included authors past and present, ancient goddesses and muses. From those suggestions, a panel of judges chose what they felt were the best six names.

The panel consisted of Shehan Karunatilaka, winner of the Booker Prize 2022 for his novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of Books); Margaret Busby, Britain’s first Black female publisher and chair of the Booker Prize 2020 judges; Gabriel Schenk, grandson of P H Newby; David Walser, partner and collaborator of the late Jan Pieńkowski; and Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation.

The shortlisted names were Bernie, Beryl, Iris, Minerva, Janina and Calliope. Thousands of people from around the world then voted in a poll on the Booker Prizes website. The name Bernie – after Bernardine Evaristo, the first Black woman to win the prize, in 2019; as well as being a reference to Bernice Rubens, the first woman to win the prize, in 1970 – received the most public votes.

However, while “surprised and flattered” that her name won the poll, Evaristo felt it would be more appropriate to pay tribute to one of the great writers from the Booker’s past instead. The Booker Prize Foundation “respects Bernardine’s wishes” and has decided that the name with the second-highest number of votes, Iris, will now be the name of the trophy. The new name honours 1978 Booker winner Iris Murdoch, who was nominated for the prize seven times and won it in 1978 for The Sea, The Sea (Chatto & Windus).

The trophy is a recreation of the original Booker Prize statuette, which was designed by the award-winning children’s book illustrator Jan Pieńkowski and first awarded to author P H Newby in 1969. The design was inspired by an art deco lamp Pieńkowski found in Portobello Market, London. Following Pieńkowski’s death in February 2022, the trophy was reinstated for last year’s Booker Prize.

Evaristo said: “I’m surprised and flattered that the name Bernie was nominated by readers in the Booker Prizes’ trophy competition and that it received the most votes in the public poll, in recognition of both Bernice Rubens, the first woman to win the Booker, and myself. But as the only living author on the list, I feel it would be more fitting for the honour to go to a writer who is no longer with us. It’s wonderful to see that it will be named after the great Iris Murdoch instead.”

The Iris Murdoch Society said: “We are thrilled that the reading public have chosen “Iris” as the name for the Booker Prize Trophy. Iris Murdoch had a lifelong belief in the value of literature to society, and throughout her life she championed the work of writers and artists. ‘Literature,’ she said, ‘satisfies our curiosity and interests us in other people and other scenes and helps us to be tolerant and generous.’ The Booker Prize embodies all these values."