I've always been very grateful that my parents gave me a simple, traditional and monosyllabic name (no risk of abbreviation) - there is something horribly self-indulgent about both the celebrity names and some of those that one hears in daily life, as if the children are a sort of possession or plaything or extension of the parents' personae rather than an independent person in the making.

I,too, Mary! Evelyn Waugh used to consider the difficulty of inventing truly fictional names for one's  characters: 'the Times announces Births to Fimbel, Futty and Prescott-Pickup'.

I could never go through life with a surname like Fullalove or Prettyjohn,and I wonder why some people never seem to tire of having a surname which they must have to spell out every time they give it over the phone . I once knew a chap called Holtom, whom naturally most people called Halton, wherupon he used to get intensely, and  unresaonably (I thought) annoyed.

First names (or Christian names as we used to call them) are berybrevealing.I associate Nicholas, Dominic,Benedict and Simon with  familes who play bridge, revere the minor royals,   prize their silver cutlery and still say Grace at meals.

Alan  Bennett has a fascinating theory that first names  which parents associate with  old people are not given to their children.Thus  Amelia and Adeline fell out of fashon,then after the war Doris,Ada  and Mabel would be avoided. Once all the Emilys were long dead the names coiuld be revived for baby girls, and so on.
I think it's in one of his plays that the  manager of an old folks' home says 'welcome! You're our first Kevin'.

I once knew a boy called Everton,and  another truly called Wyatt Earp. My grandparents considered calling my father Milton beore settling for John (he was always  called Jack) and he in turn considered calling me Alaric. Some vicars refused to baptise with other than Biblical names. My mother's friend May had to be  baptised Mary as the vicar said May  was pagan!

celeb names can be very cruel later in life when they sound outdated or absurd. I well remember travelling through Salford on a train and hearing a father shout to his little girl, 'Fallon, gerroff that seat!'

Ron's point about Equity is interesting. I believe  it's for a similar reason that many boats and horses have such odd names,because they all have to be registered and therefore unique.

No such restriction seems to apply to films.I'm often frustrated to find the title of a film I like applied to another,very different film I've never  seen and don't  want to see. 'Traffic' or 'Dust' for instance,.

Shut it Keanu!!!

Poor little beggars.  When I was growing up there was even a child called Cheyenne.  It's later that they suffer.

My daughter, being half Welsh and half German, has a Welsh first name and a German surname, thus ensuring that wherever we live most people will get half of it wrong. Maybe we should have called her Sunflower or McGonagall or Fluffpixie or Solenoid.

Why is one of the Wagner great-granddaughters named after a brand of trainers?

Mach's doch mal.

I think it was Terry Pratchett who alerted me to the dangers of names like Michaela and Alana (and yes, we have one of those in the family). Nobody admits to it, but everybody's thinking "We wanted a boy, but we'll make do with her"

One first name which is splendidily distinctive without being absurd is Aldous.

Was anyone else ever called Aldous? Where did they get it from?