First of all – very funny site. Especially the Welsh names. Don’t they realise they all actually mean ‘third elf from the left in the battle of Helm’s Deep’?

Now my own story – my given name is Andrew Thomas. Nothing of note there. But my mother, for reason unknown to anyone, picked the middle name John, condemning me to a life of being ‘John Thomas’. (I escaped teasing by not actually telling anyone what my middle name was while I was at school.)

My mother has since remarried, and her surname is now Counsell (pronounced ‘council’). When she got pregnant, our family was all to happy to suggest a variety of ridiculous names: ‘Preston Borough Counsell’; ‘Greater London Counsell’; ‘Counsell, Of the wise and enlightened elder ones’. And so forth. My personal favourite was a suggestion from a helpful aunt: ‘Pontius Lucifer Judas Counsell.’ I think she’d been drinking.

They called him Jack. Bit of an anti-climax, I know.

Recently, BBC TV showed an animated comedy sketch-show called Monkey Dust, in which one of the skits was of two middle-class parents fretting over their as-yet-unnamed baby.

Mother: We could call him Hercules!
Father: That’s a great idea!
Baby (internal monologue): Or why not simply Gaylord?

Eventually, they choose Othello, and the kid spends the next six episodes having the crap beaten out of him by other babies, while in the background you can hear the parents saying “We just wanted him to have a unique name, you know? So he would stand out …”

Keep up the good work!

Andi.

PS. Yes, that’s with an ‘i’. I started it when I was about 15 and highly pretentious (that’s a symbiotic relationship, I believe), and it stuck. To be honest, ‘Andy’ has always seemed a bit too earnest. “Here’s Andy, with this morning’s prayers.” Mind you, Andi sounds like a sanitary product.