The annual appearance of the most-popular-baby-names list is a juicy bone thrown to British snobs, and I admit that my first thought, on looking at the rise of names like Albie, Jaxon, Ava and Isla, was: “A lot of these are probably inspired by satellite TV shows I don’t watch.”

I own a dictionary of first names (a standard bit of kit for any novelist). It was published in 1990, and the introduction takes for granted that the Bible will be the main wellspring, especially Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, none of which makes the upper 50 of the top 100 for 2016.

Unfortunately, as the dictionary points out, “very few women play a major role in the gospels”. There was Mary, of course, but her name is not in the current top 100.

Speaking of the 60s, I was born in 1962, and the name of an apostle was bestowed upon me. Both my parents are dead, and I never got around to asking why they called me Andrew, but it can’t have been for religious reasons. It’s possible I was named after Prince Andrew, just because that name was in the air, so I am perhaps no freer of celebrity culture than those who call their children after the offspring of the Beckhams. (Harper was up 19 places in 2016).

Once, a relief teacher, doing the register when I was in infant school, paused after reading out Andrew Martin, and said, “I like that name.” Being precocious, I demanded, “Why?” “I don’t know,” came the feeble reply, and I certainly don’t know. As a name, Andrew Martin has always struck me as very anonymous. The best that can be said is that it has a sort of plodding equilibrium.

Lack of originality

In 1962, Andrew was number 49 in the top 100. Now it does not figure at all. So do I finally have an interesting and unusual name? No, because the world is still cluttered up with all the other Andrews of approximately my age, and indeed all the other Andrew Martins. There are at least three others in the writing trade, although two of them go by “Andy”. One of those Andys is a Cambridge don, and if I am approached with some particularly highbrow proposal — “We were thinking you might be up for writing a brief survey of existentialism” — I am obliged to direct them towards the ivory tower in which my more academically distinguished namesake resides.

When asked to create a password for some new internet transaction, my first effort is usually rated “poor” for lack of originality (and it is very galling to be called unimaginative by a robot).

By throwing in a couple of digits and a capital letter, I stagger along to “fair”. But my own name is permanently stuck on “poor”. In order to create a permissible email address, I had to bring in a three-digit number and my middle name. (Here, sticking with the theme of un-memorability, my parents opted for John.) I calculate that I would be earning 20 per cent more if I had an interesting or even memorable name. I have often vowed to kick the next person who addresses me as “Martin” on the assumption it’s my first name.

I speak as a professional author, but in the age of social media everyone is a professional author, such is the importance of online promotion. The penny does seem to have dropped, and there is a poignant groping after uniqueness in the rise of Willow, Luna, Reggie and Jesse. But for true flamboyance you have to go off piste. You have to dare to be ridiculous, as the upper classes have always known, hence Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Andrew Martin is a novelist.