Sunbeam Moonshine just won’t wash

The art of choosing a name:

IF you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, why would you judge a person by their name? Being known as “geek features” at school led to all kinds of wild assumptions about me having the features of a geek and most of them were true.

Of course, that wasn’t my “real” name, it was just an easy description someone came up with in the first year of secondary school which stuck. My real name is Kevin which, as you’ve probably worked out from my picture, means handsome.

I’ll consider that compensation for the fact that every annoying kid in a movie in the 80s and 90s seemed to have the same name as me. My second name is Joseph which is a family name, that of my father and grandfather, and my surname, Fitzpatrick, indicates an Irish descent. I can boil potatoes and go freckly in the sun with the best of them.

As names go, I’m pretty happy with it. It conjures up a decent mix of ancestry and aesthetic delusion.

Everyone has to have a name and most people somehow suit theirs. You can change it if you’re really not happy but the grass won’t always be greener. Going from Gordon to “The Gordotron” may have been a good idea on the stag do, but like that tattoo of Tinkerbell on your forehead, it may not feel quite so cool when you’re back at work in accounts.

When you’re naming a child, decisions come with a hefty responsibility. Unless you’re famous and sending your child to a private school full of equally ridiculously named children, calling them Sunbeam Moonshine Taloolah Behind Tescos just won’t wash. Any lad called that at my school would have had a nightmare.

When naming a second or third child you have to consider how it will sound alongside those of its siblings. Will the list of names have a nice ring to it when shouted loudly out of a back door at teatime? It’s something to consider.

Once, as prospective parents, you have agreed upon a name it’s best not to tell anyone if it means a lot to you. Other parents may steal it and family and friends will have no qualms about pulling their face and saying, “Oh no. No. That’s what my neighbour’s dog’s called.”

So what name should we have gone for when a tiny, beautiful girl recently arrived in our lives? We went for Amelie Elizabeth, which means industrious and eager but the main reason we chose it is because we think it’s lovely. And there’s no better reason that that.

Next week… The Art of Catching Flies