What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. That’s true, no doubt, although I will never consent to being called Lily, but that’s Shakespeare for you, profound as always. Extracted from Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene II.

However, people in general do not take kindly to being called by a name other than their given one. Singers and actors exempted, of course. Boy George is probably happier being called just that and not George O’Dowd. Likewise, (Sir) Elton John who was Reginald Dwight at birth. Or the late Bruce Lee, who was Lee Jun-fan.

I have been satisfied with Kevin although Stanton, my middle name, I didn’t quite like as a youngster, particularly because it sounded like ‘stand thin’ and it didn’t help that I was what used to be called a skinny-winny child. I didn’t mind close friends and family shortening Kevin to Kev, although one or two attempts to call me Kevy met with strong disapproval (meaning the caller got roundly ignored.)

Parents usually have a decent-enough reason for giving a baby a name. Names, in turn, are decided upon well before birth. “If it’s a boy it will be so-and-so, if it’s a girl it will called ...” Pre-birth conversations generally take that route. A handful of names is tossed around and one finally agreed upon by the couple.

When witty people remind us that we can’t choose our family, they fail to add that we can’t choose our names as well. Although, to be fair, a name can be changed by deed poll later in life. The name game, one discovers, is vast and varied. Children are sometimes named after a parent.

In this way, Abraham’s son becomes Abraham as well, and in order to distinguish between the two they get called Abraham Sr and Abraham Jr, or Abe 1 and Abe 2.

Girls often get named after flowers. My dad’s mother was a Violet and his sister was Lily. A former pupil was Jasmine and a friend’s daughter is Petunia (although that got shortened to Petty!) My parents couldn’t say exactly why they named me Kevin although mum said it was a good Irish name (and me being Anglo-Indian that made perfect sense!) and my father, a quiet man at the best of times, pointed out that Kevin was a saint, too. The other Kevin that is, not this.

Some names are given after careful forethought. The Gardners named their daughter April and the two names coexisted evocatively together. The Hawkes named their little girl Holly, the Kings named their son Joe. Mr and Mrs Badman must have been sorely tempted to name their boy Avery but ended up calling him Norton (which, as with Petty above, got ‘affectionised’ to Norty!)

A few parents discover that their initial cleverness with naming can, in later life, have a boomerang effect. Everybody agreed that Mr and Mrs Rose’s daughter was aptly named Wylde. She was pretty and nymph-like. Then she met and fell in love with, and married, the handsome Simon Bull. That changed everything for Wylde Rose. It’s probably with this history in mind to guide them that Mr and Mrs Layber steered clear of naming their boy Manuel.

In some countries, children are named after deities. One deity as in Krishna, for instance. Or three, as in Sivaramakrishna. Occasionally, one gets the feeling that an attempt is being made to fit the entire family tree in a name. Harishchandrachintanaichelvan, for example. All of which brings me to Dorothy Dash (or Dot Dash), a retired nurse in her 70s. As a retirement project, she has just embarked on a worldwide study of names and the culture of naming. “It’s what I’ve always yearned to do and now I have the time and the money to do it,” she tells me, adding with a glint in her eye that, in this day and age, she is fortunate not to have had Com as her surname.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.