Complain about yer name...

Not only that but it has two kick-ass anagrams: Peter Baran = Barnet Ape (especially good when you note I support Barnet FC) Peter C.Baran = Crap E. Banter.

Hamilton is fine too except when your fool friends in a kind of male regressive syndrome start calling you Hammers. I so appreciate that. Thanks lads.

My middle name is Lydia, everyone is allowed to know that.

My real surname will NEVER be revealed, because it is twee-er than twee, so I changed it for the extraneously-vowelled, posh, intellectual monkier you see now.

And I have two middle names, which is a real pain in the arse, as American legal forms only ever allow you to have one, and I never know which one to put.

But the best name-changing story I know, is the Canadian fellow who hated his name so much that he had it legally changed to Sa Tan. This is completely true, I even saw his credit card with that name on it.

Ned Andrew Raggett. Viva. I like my name, if only because I have yet to meet an actual Ned in real life, and the only Raggetts I know are all overseas, so hurray for being vaguely unique. It's also just a bemusing combination to begin with. Mind you, given that "Raggett" rhymes with 'faggot,' you can imagine the endless joy the Annoying Sorts in middle school had with my name. It would have been interesting if was I actually gay...

Strangely, it wasn't til I started working that a nickname finally stuck. As a callow young freelancer arriving at IPC tower for the first time, the editorial staff of a Weekly Music Magazine would greet me with the chant :"Yowsa yowsa, it's Stevie Trousers!". Exactly like being a new kid at school. I didn't like it at the time, because, well, I didn't like most of the people who were using it.

Since then it has followed me onto the modern interweb, and I still don't like it that much, but I like the people more, so, it's stuck. For now.

xoxo

"Hopkins" helped me get a place on an English degree as the interviewer went into raptures about good old non-uncle Gerard Manley (who I'd not read at the time) and I just had to sit there looking impressed. Not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

My other sisters got off way better with names. Megan Brianna and Jamie Marie.

My DAD got the blessed H, but it doesn't matter what his middle name is. Everyone calls him "Dick". Of, better yet, "Rumpy". He has Rumpy1 on his liscence plate. Whenever I see my dad drive by with his Chows in the back of his pick-up, chucking ciggys out the window at passerby, I gather all the potentially intelligent & interesting people I can see & would like to befriend, point to that shocking blue monstrosity of a truck and say, "That's my pop."

And I should legally change my last name to Raposo or Rapasa, to appease the people sending me endless amounts of junkmail. On the Internet, though, my surname is &LName;. I like that.

Bring back normal sensible names like John and Mary, I say.

It has already started happening in the States- all those exotic Tiffanys and Brittneys and Ashleighs and Caitlins aren't looking so exotic any more, intentional misspellings and everything! Hah!

My middle is Jon (spelled like that) which I also like, I got a much better deal than my sister Emma Felicity Jane.

There are so many assumed names in our band, that while we were on tour, we got paged by our birth names in an airport, and didn't know they were talking about us, and nearly missed our flight?

One of my middle names is Cyrus, which used to be exotic and cool (it's a trad. Parsee name, from my dad's side of the family), until everything changed and I started having to say "Yes, as in Billy Ray"

When I got to college, I told everyone that my nickname was deX! (note the spelling; I was desperately in need of attention). It took about a year, but the name finally stuck and now I have at least one semi-unique name that people know me by. (It was very helpful when I joined the all-male glee club, which already had two other Dans in it.) Of course, no one knew me at all on the Internet/Usenet, so I just called mself deX! from day one.

The other day I got an email from a kid in England whose name is an exact match for mine: Daniel James Perry. It was kind of freaky; did someone clone me without my knowledge?

Eh, tell me about it, apparently 21 years ago "Rebecca" was unusual (no, really...) when my parents decided to name me that, inspired by, uh, the Archbishop of Canterbury's daughter. FACT, ish. Rock'n'roll, huh? Still, I quite like it. Better than my other names...

I have an unusual and slightly unfortunate surname. For reasons too complicated and dull to bother with but closer to "BT are useless" than "we're ex-directory", we are not the entry of that name in the local phone book, nor is he related to us (at least, if he is then it's only extremely distantly). His father apparently fell out with his family, decided to disown them, and changed his name to that and moved down here, only to discover that there were already people with that surname nearby and people kept thinking he was related to us instead, which I don't imagine was quite the "starting over without associations with lunatic relatives" effect he'd been hoping for...

It had to be said. Alternately, maybe not.

I'm generally a fan of famous people with my last name though: Eileen, Justice William the Liberal Lion, Walter, Tom Wait's wife Kathleen. When I do an Google image search on Brennan the people look pretty likeable.

Arthur's my middle name. It's great! My first name's Tim, I hate that, though. Really hated being called Timmy. Don't mind being called Artie or Art. When I was a teen and all angry and atheistic, I hated the fact that my first name means "Godfearing". So I started going by my middle name after high school I thought it sounded more rock 'n' rolly, a la Arthur Kane or the Kinks Arthur. And anglo, natch. I'd rather be named after a Kinks album and a Dudley Moore movie than a Replacements album and a Mel Gibson movie.

The only grief I got was being called 'Gayweather' once or twice, and I often recieved the comment 'what's the weather going to be like tommorrow?" like, by merely having the word 'weather' in my surname somehow gave me some sort of meteorological clairvoyance. And it didn't.

I love it. 2 syllables each. Quite elegant. My mother, a French teacher, could joyfully be nicknamed L(')arsenic by her students. I was always Templar, of course. The Saint in me...

Other guesses for Kate's surname: "Bunting", "Bunford", "Wetherby", "De La Billiere".

Strangely I always imagined "Trousse" was a made-up name, though I'd thankfully never mentioned it to Stevie. Sorry and all that: I'm *very* impressed now I know the truth.

I like "Robin" because it isn't tied specifically to any era (it's never been spectacularly popular at any time) or *overtly* to any social class (people often think it sounds middle-class, but it's hardly "Sebastian" or, shudder, "Toby"), and it sounds "nice" without sounding "wet" (in the Molesworthian sense). I like "Carmody" because it trips off the tongue well and, in parts of Britain where they aren't many Irish people, it tends not to be very common, hence I stand out, and I sort of like that.

As for Otis' name -- 'Lamont' is a joy and thing of beauty. Yet somehow I find either 'Esteban' or 'Georgios' more appealing.

I wish my name was Siobhan. I'm going to call Otis "Stephane" from now on.

Tadeusz Mikolaj Suchodolski, Esq. Pretty pretentious for someone who's Dad is a Postmaster and who's Mom was a schoolteacher.

Dr Seuss: "There was an old woman called Mrs McCave/who had 35 sons and called all of them Dave"

Bill

Tom = yes. Good solid name. I used to hate my name and wanted to swap my first and middle names around, but then I'd be called Richard, and I've gone off Richard a bit, while, as I leave my wild years behind me, Tom seems better and better.

Ewing I don't like at all. It's just ugly.

Hey Ally you should marry Jonathan Katz!

Only really tolerate my parents calling me Andy - too much like 'Andy Pandy' for my liking. Never been very happy with my surname - Littlefield - because people either make amusing variants of it ('Smallmeadow' - ooh, never heard that before, aren't you clever) or else get it mixed up with other 'Little' type names (Littlewood, Littleton, etc. etc.) And it's too bloody long.

ME, TOO!!!

Gee, Chris, I knew there was a reason that we got along.

It was so odd, I went to more than one Catholic school. I always had to get special dispensation from the Bishop in order to take Holy Communion, so I didn't look like a freak, being the only protestant not going up and taking communion. My mum just had a thing for religious schools of *any* persuasion, no matter how whackadoo. I mean, I even went to a *Christian Scientist* School for a year! They're not Christians, they're not scientists, and my brother and I were given corporal punnishment for believing in evolution!

It's so odd. It's how I'm not Catholic at all, but I manage to have loads of the Catholic hangups. Unbelievable.

One day the Bishop came and took an assembly, the theme of which was "doing your best" and one poor tiny girl stuck her hand up to explain that to improve you had to do better than that. The Bish said "no, that's a stupid idea, what silly idiot told you that?"

The assembly collapsed in laughter, tears and recriminations.

I am no longer avoiding my roommate, she seems to be sleeping. I am now avoiding writing my Jay-Z review.

My first middle name is Deanna, which I *loathe* because it's well common, whenever I tell people this it seems like MY TRAILER IS SHOWING. My second middle name is Mercereau, which is granny's maiden name and seriously Huguenot. Somehow I am Irish, French and Polish but NOT Catholic. Go figure.