Dialogue: Dilemma in the game of naming

Last week brought the end to a nine-month dilemma: what to call our new baby boy.

Well-meaning friends have been compiling lists on our behalf and even strangers have been submitting ideas but a complication cropped up, forcing me unwillingly down one particular path.

You see my husband has a family tradition on his side where the first son of the first son is named after his grandfather.

And as much as I love my father-in-law his name is, well, not what I had in mind. It's a completely inoffensive name, so inoffensive in fact those millions of others in the world have it, too.

And you see that's the problem. These days the name of our children can make a bit of a statement - more about the parents than the poor kid himself. I just never envisaged myself having a boy called Peter.

Frankly, I thought I was too interesting for that. And that's the major chink in my defence my husband exploited. This is more to do with my self-image than anything else.

Noticed how no one calls their kid Peter, David, Leanne, Sandra or Sue any more? That sort of plain-jane-ing stopped in the late 60s. Since then there have been several fads when it comes to naming offspring.

The last 10 or so years saw a sort of Brideshead Revisited thing happening for boys with a plethora of Ruperts, Jaspers, Oscars and Sebastians emerging.

Similarly the Jane Austen-esque Charlotte, Emma, Arabella, Georgina styled names for girls have been all the rage.

We have seen the Upstairs Downstairs revival with the long-live-the-king style - Henry, Thomas, and George for boys and scullery maid names like Ruby and Rose for girls.

Paralleling this, "Merchant banking/management consultancy" - styled names like Morgan, Courtney, Taylor and Harrison have had a real thrashing.

And geographic location have emerged as viable alternatives - India, China, Devon and, of course, the most famous of them all, Lourdes.

But then there's the "crazy/I'm an individual" group which I confess I firmly belong.

Among my daughter's contemporaries are Pippi, Mimi, a couple of Cocos and Ziggys, an Elmo, Gypsy and a Buster.

Close friends have a theme going naming their three boys after British cars - Royce, Austin and Victor.

The crazy-namers have nannas and poppas everywhere muttering to themselves - how could you be so cruel, the poor kid - which is ironic since that is exactly what I think about calling my kids something more commonplace.

Strangely, despite being part of the crazy-name set, I just realised that 80 per cent of the blokes I know are called either Peter, Paul, David, Mark, Christopher, Andrew, Stephen, Michael and the all-time classic John.

And these are the fathers of the "crazy-named" kids coming up. Maybe back in the early 60s it was less about standing out and more about fitting in. Or maybe our parents just lacked imagination. I know for starters that I was named after Dad saw a Sandra Dee movie and my sister after the Beatles classic Michelle. Great.

It wasn't until the late 60s when the groovier boomers started reproducing that we had a new set of names to contend with which ranged from hippie-styled Rainbow and River to those 70s beauties like Bryce, Ross, Gavin and Darren.

For us in the crazy-naming set, it's all tied up in our hopes and dreams for our kids. Despite my father-in-law leading anything but an ordinary life I have always assumed that boys called Peter are destined to become creatively unfulfilled accountants. Surely an extraordinarily outstanding name gives one a better shot at being creative and interesting. Where I get this logic from I have no idea. .

After about nine months of arguing I have surrendered to the whole tradition thing after several ear-bashings from my husband whose arguments range from the strong and decisive "I am naming my own son" and "it's just a given" to the rather lame "it's a good solid truck driver's name!" "Just think, no one will be called Peter when he grows up." (Precisely. Ever wonder why?)

So it's Peter.

But I have an excuse to give my crazy-naming cohorts - we're spearheading a revival of the apostles. It's going to be all the rage.

* Peter Teddy Sado Nola was born on Thursday, September 14, and weighed 3.5kg.