We’ll miss you, Des

NAMES HAVE always gone through cycles of popularity but the demise of ‘Desmond’ is unfathomable. There can’t be a man or woman among us who doesn’t know a Des – and not just famous ones like Des Cahill and Des Bishop or the late Cardinal Desmond Connell.

Last year, not a single Desmond was registered, and the name joins Donald, Stewart, Roger, Nigel, Norman and Rodney on the path to extinction. If they were being replaced by names that meant something, this might be forgivable but when an aberration such as Jaxon is the 12th most popular boy’s name of the last 10 years, it seems a shame that where once we looked to our heritage for names – the original Desmonds were earls – we now pick imported Americanisms from reality television. How sad.