Online edition of Sunday Observer

Perhaps we should, laments Colin Dunne, whose life would surely have turned out differently if he'd been called Sebastian

Pet names

Pets don't seem to escape any more lightly than their unfortunate owners when it comes to names, especially since the recent trend for giving pets human names started. In the last few months I've come across a goldfish called Gavin, a labrador called Harold, a poodle called Margaret and a Burmese cat called Joe. Does this mean that people will soon start christening their children Rover, Scamp and smoky? Best stick with Kim, which works equally well for girls and German shepherds.

Colin. It's awful, isn't it? It's the sort of name which, for me, conjures up a picture of a man who wears short-sleeved shirts and quite possibly has an illuminated fishtank in his house. Colins, I always suspect, have caravans and Roger Whittaker records and may even say "take a pew" when you enter their homes. For the first 20 years of my life, I loathed the name Colin, and would shrink and shrivel whenever I heard it. Why couldn't I be called Bob or Mike or Roger - sound, sensible, sporty names, like my friends? Instead, I was a nerd, before nerds were even invented.

In this family, we are about to acquire another generation, which means the name-choosing books are coming out again. This time, I shall give it considerable thought before making any suggestions, which is more than my parents did for me.

But I'm not unusual, many people detest their own names at least until they have passed voting age, by which time - like me - they sink into a sort of weary resignation. The trouble with first names is that they come with a lot of baggage - social, historical and personal. Nothing fixes you more firmly in time and space than your name. Show me a Len, a Ted or an Eric, and I will show you a 68-year-old man who lives in a terraced house and almost certainly keeps pigeons. Sharon and Tracey are now indelibly linked to Basildon, and a thousand white stilettos dancing round a pile of handbags. Their less celebrated, but equally dated, boyfriends Darren and Wayne have also gone into the dustbin of history.

But 30 years ago some parents sitting down with the "Names Book" in front of the fire, must have said, "Oooh, Sharon sounds nice, really classy."

Names like these must put a fierce brake on ambition; no matter how clever he is, no Wayne is ever going to become Prime Minister, although he may get to be a snooker champion; and even the most tuneful of Sharons are unlikely to make the Royal Opera. What are today's time-bomb names, the ones which will cause people to explode with laughter 15 years from now? Watch out for Jade and Jasmine: these are the names of the barmaids of the future.

Fashion in names is as eccentric and unpredictable as hemlines. They come in waves, unseen at the time, but all too apparent as the years slip by. I thought I'd chosen well when I named mine Sarah, Rebecca and Matthew; not unique, certainly, but pleasingly unusual, and vaguely biblical, too. Five years later when they went to school, they all discovered they shared first names with half the population of the same age.

Simultaneously, touched by an unseen virus, thousands of other parents picked out Sarah, Rebecca and Matthew as pleasingly unusual.

What makes it even more confusing is that the fashion is cyclical. When I was a child, I could hardly bring myself to mention my raft of ancient aunties and uncles because of their names. Agnes, Madge, Lily, Albert, Bernie and Fred, sounded to me like an outdated, and not very funny, music hall act. Now they are all long gone, but their names have just begun to appear once more in the births column of The Times. Anyone called Albert these days must either be six months or 85-years-old - there's nothing in between.

Is that snobbish? Of course it is: names are labels for social gradation. If you doubt this, think about Tabitha. At Benenden or ballet school, Tabitha is a fine working name, but I would not wish to be a 13-year-old Tabitha in an inner-city comprehensive, not if I wanted to get out alive. But then, one of the few consistent truths is that, for girls, most names which end in an 'a' are upmarket. Henrietta, Arabella, Georgina and Tara, all come decked out in cashmere and mummy's pearls.

Sometimes, for different reasons, people wish to move downmarket, after all, Anthony Blair is a splendid name for a promising young barrister, but Tony has a more demotic, man-of-the-people sort of ring.

At least with my middle name my parents played it fairly straight. David is safe, although Davey Dunne would have been disastrous at school. Alliterative names which may sound euphonious at the font become hysterically funny in a playground, and I speak as a man whose early girlfriends included a Thersa Turnbull and an Antoinette Andrews.

Beware too many initials. Did my parents realise that my brother Brian Anthony would carry a school bag marked BAD? And do not think for a minute that you can conceal some ludicrous family name under any anonymous middle-name initial, schoolmates will always unearth it. My friend Maggie MS Bourne never knew a day's teasing until the other names were revealed as Maude Spence.

A friend of my wife's called her daughter Petal, because she was soft and delicate. Well, I can tell you, I saw a picture of Petal when she was still very young, and it struck me immediately that Turnip would have been more accurate. But if babies were named after their appearance, there'd be an awful lot of Turnips and Screaming Tomatoes around. If she grows up to be pretty and dainty, Daisy is a lovely name, less so if she hits six foot and 15 stone. And if my parents had called me Rock, at ten stone on a good day, I may have had problems.

But why should we be lumbered with a name for life which has been chosen by our parents in a moment of ignorance and folly? I think that at the age of, say, 15, we should be allowed to re-name ourselves to something which (we think) reflects our characters more truly. Indeed, I know several people who have done this, if a little furtively. Any name which has been truncated or modified signifies an owner who is at least a little unhappy with the full-length original. I asked my friend Mo McAuley about this. I've always known her as Mo, a name which reflects her bubbly and amusing personality, which is why she jettisoned the original Maureen. The full name, she says, reminds her of the times she was in trouble as a child 'Maur-EEN!' I know what she means. All those names like Maureen, Doreen, Noreen and Pauline were just made for shrieking over northern backyards flapping with damp washing.

My sister Anne tried for years to off-load her name. She passionately wanted to be called Brenda, no, he cannot remember why, not can anyone else, including several Brendas. At school, without warning, she switched to her middle name which somewhat perplexed my father when she brought home her report. "Margaret tries hard....." he read, with some surprise.

During her artistic phase, the teens, she did briefly become Anna, and it was at that time that I yearned to be Sebastian. I thought it went rather well with a velvet jacket and a cigarette holder (yes, I had just been reading Oscar Wilde). Sebastian seemed to me like a chap who might go far in life. With a name like Sebastian, I could be anything - a composer, a poet, a customer of Left Bank cafes, a man who might even one day marry a Zelda.

It must be something in the genes, my daughter Becky was so taken with a character in a Jack Kerouac book that she changed her name to his - by deed poll. It only lasted a year, but the sudden emergence of Dean Moriarty must look odd on her CV.

Oddly, the best guide to safe names remains the Kings and Queens of England. William, John, Henry, Anne, Mary, Jane, Elizabeth are all pretty inoffensive, which is perhaps all you can ask of a name, and we have not, I think, so far had a Queen Spice. I wish my parents had thought of that.

Although with their taste in names, I would probably have gone through life being called Ethelred Dunne.

Okay, I'll stick with Colin. Time to feed the fish and listen to Old Durham Town again.