What’s in a name anyway?

The Beckhams have called their new son Romeo. But Liam Rudden asks what impact such a moniker will have on his life

WHEN the birth of David and Victoria Beckham’s second son was announced on Sunday, everyone waited with bated breath to hear what Posh and Becks - the couple who had tastefully named their first son Brooklyn after the place where he was conceived - had chosen as a name for the latest member of their family.

There was never any doubt that it would be unusual, but it still took many by surprise when David Beckham announced to the waiting press that his "gorgeous" new son would be called Romeo.

Of course, they’re not the first celebrity couple to give their offspring outlandish names. Bob Geldof’s daughters Peaches, Pixie and Fifi Trixibelle can attest to that - as can their half-sister, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily.

And they’re not the first to plump for the Shakespearean option either. Three months ago, Karl Chapman, chief executive of the Usher Hall, and his partner Lulu Johnston named their first son Felix Romeo, secure in the knowledge that it would be a unique name.

Karl recalls: "We actually put a lot of names in a bag and pulled them out. Felix we liked because it means happy, and Romeo because it’s very romantic, but we did think it would make a better middle name than a first.

"We thought we’d come up with a nice original name - one our son could live up to when he was older - and now suddenly there’s another Romeo, which is a real gutter because we didn’t think it was that common a name."

It will be now, of course. And as legions of Beckham fans follow their example, we can expect an explosion of Romeos, Juliets and maybe even Tybalts on school registers over the next few years. Like the Beckhams no doubt, Karl believes that as Felix Romeo gets older, his peers will think his name is cool . . . or will they?

As a teenager, David Bowie’s son Zowie Bowie finally had enough of the ribbing his name brought and decided he preferred to be known as plain old Joe Jones - his true family surname - instead. And the son of Kung Fu star David Carradine wasted no time in changing his name, Free, to Tom. After all, introducing yourself with "Hello, I’m Free" could only last so long.

Stroma Finlayson, a customer service administrator with Intelligent Finance in Edinburgh, admits that she too once thought of changing her name, although she is now glad she didn’t.

The 21-year-old from South Queensferry explains: "I’m named after an island that lies halfway between Scotland and Orkney. At high school, the other kids would make words out of my name because it was so different.

"They called me Strimmer and Stroller and a load of other stupid names until, when I was 14, I thought about swapping Stroma for my middle name, Christina.

"However, since I left school and started working, having an unusual name has become an advantage, as when I phone a customer they tend to remember me simply because of my name."

Someone else who knows all about having an unusual name is 20-year-old Sierra Paprotny. "I love my name," she says, revealing that even as a teenager attending Forester High she never minded the teasing it brought.

"I used to get the usual name-calling at school - well, I do have the same name as a car - but I kind of liked being different. I got all the nicknames that you will be thinking of right now . . . Ford, Escort, Astra, things like that. But it never bothered me and never got to the extent that I went home in tears."

She blames her dad, an ex-Army man who was stationed in Spain’s Sierra Nevada, for her name but says: "I love it because it’s so different. Everyone thinks it’s a lovely name and asks where it comes from, which is a great conversation starter."

But both Stroma and Sierra are hardly as bad as some of the names celebrity parents have landed on their sprogs. Cher chose Chastity for her daughter, while Sylvester Stallone called his Sage Moonblood. Famously, or perhaps infamously, musician Frank Zappa named his daughter Moon Unit - she was born at the time of the Apollo landings - and his son Dweezil, his pet name for his wife’s little toe.

Evening News columnist Tonya Macari, however, looked to her make-up bag when choosing a name.

She admits: "I named my daughter Biba after my first eye-shadow. When I was about 14, my auntie who lived in London and worked in the very first Miss Selfridges sent me up a little black plastic pot of glossy purple eye-shadow. Across the lid in gold writing was the word Biba."

When her daughter came along four years ago, Tonya remembered it. "I just thought it was such a lovely name. I did briefly consider Aphrodite and Venus, but as we already had a six-year-old son called Bruno - who wasn’t named after the next-door neighbours’ dog but after his grandfather - Biba seemed a much nicer choice."

And Tonya says she has no worries about her children being teased at school. She says: "Neither have ever had any problems so far, but I suppose how you react to having an unusual name depends on your personality. If you are shy and retiring, it might be a tad embarrassing. But, as names go, Bruno and Biba are not that bad . . . it’s not like calling them Tutti Frutti and Trolley Dolly, as I read one lady down south had done."

Having such distinctive names can have its disadvantages, though. When caught for some minor indiscretion, it’s easy to pass the blame if your name is Susan or Karen. When it’s Perrotine, however, it’s not that easy . . . as Perrotine Orr, the gymnastics development officer at Edinburgh Leisure, knows only too well.

Laughing, the 29-year-old admits: "The only disadvantage of having a name like Perrotine is that if you’re ever in trouble you stand out like a sore thumb . . . you can’t say ‘It wasn’t me’.

"My dad actually discovered the name Perrotine during a French history lesson when he was a boy. According to him, Perrotine was a French princess who was burned at the stake. The name stuck with him and he swore, right from that early age, that his first-born daughter would be called that."

At school, the young Perrotine would refuse to answer to anything but her full name. "I just wouldn’t speak until they used my proper name - that way people tended to get used to it quite quickly," she says, admitting that having such an unusual name made her feel special.

"It gave me a better sense of my own identity," she says. "Because my name stands out from the crowd, people feel they know you before they have even met you. Having such a good experience with my name actually gave me the confidence to call my own wee boy Kelland without any worries."