As a Warwickshire girl, born and bred, I am rarely one to take issue with Shakespeare. However, when the intensely drippy Juliet mused ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet,’ he may have committed a cardinal error. Only now, as I prepare to welcome a child into the world, do I realise how important names are. There’s the perennial dilemma: finding the sweet spot between ‘everyone is called this’ and ‘my child will get teased’. After all, you want a name that’s distinct but not an obvious bully-magnet, somewhere between ‘John Doe’ and ‘Moon Unit Zappa’.

It’s important to maintain some secrecy. The question with which I am most bombarded by people who notice my bump is, ‘Have you thought of a name?’ Not ‘Is it healthy’, ‘When will you have it baptised’, etc, but the name question. To the average nosy parker, this is of most interest. Maybe, like Rumpelstiltskin, they feel they gain some sort of power through the knowledge of names.

Names, and their changing popularity, tell us as much about our times as any individual taste

Names, and their changing popularity, tell us as much about our times as any individual taste

Some, however, are not so much interested in the name as in telling you their opinions on it. My mother has already nuked two options which my husband and I were considering by relating stories about girls she disliked in secondary school who had the same name. The fact that these women are unknown to us is of no relevance. When it comes to names, even the nominally polite........

© The Spectator