Forget X AE A-12, what’s happened to honest John?

What’s in a name? Well, quite a lot these days it seems. Gone are the abundance of baby Johns - more the pity - as fancier, modern-day monikers take over.

Gemma and Kieran look to be the latest casualties, with the names the most recent to join the at-risk list of dying out.

Instead “cool” micro-names are making their way into nurseries up and down the country, with Luna and Arlo becoming popular across the English-speaking world.

I blame it on the Beckhams, who hit on the idea of naming their first-born Brooklyn after the place he was conceived. Imagine if they had been to Snodland?

And what of Elon

Musk naming his latest offspring X AE A-12?

Of course, it’s not just these relatively new upstarts.

Jacob Rees-mogg did nothing to help when he named his six children Peter

Theodore Alphege,

Mary Anne Charlotte

Emma, Thomas

Wentworth Somerset

Dunstan, Anselm

Charles Fitzwilliam,

Alfred Wulfric Leyson

Pius and Sixtus

Dominic Boniface

Christopher.

At least there was no

Octopus, as his wife gleefully reported.

I wouldn’t quite go so far as to suggest we should go back to pre1993 France and ban some names outright

- although Sixtus may feel differently when he’s older of course.

But I do applaud the tongue-in-cheek campaigns that have been doing the rounds on social media to save some unpopular monikers from dying out completely.

I agree that, looking down at your newborn baby boy, the thought ‘let’s call him Gary’ might not be the first thing on your mind.

But just think, you’d be doing a national service to good, solid, regular names!

I’m not sure why I’m so worried about it though. I usually answer to ‘Oi, you.’

‘I blame it on the Beckhams who hit on the idea of naming their first-born Brooklyn after the place he was conceived’