Our ideas for our children’s names came mainly from reading gravestones. Then it was a process of elimination.

We didn’t want Tom or Sam or Ben or Jack (my brother got that first). But an Alfred, we decided, can be anything in life without the name raising an eyebrow. And everyone, it seems, used to have one.

In my family, an inept Great Uncle Alfred had emigrated to Canada after losing an arm in an unfortunate accident involving agricultural machinery. Nobody had told me about my Great, Great Uncle Alfie, either. He was the black sheep of the family, an antiques dealer who was hounded out of England and ended his days in the company of young men in Barbados. By the time we learnt about this exotic and interesting relative, we’d already honoured his memory and registered our Alfie.

We thought we had made an original choice until he arrived at nursery and met Alfie W and Alfie E. Since then there have been Alfies everywhere, most recently Lily Allen dedicating a song to her layabout brother Alfie.

So far there have been fewer Flos to confuse ours with. Florence has a Victorian ring, equally at home above or below stairs. Everyone approved and nobody dredged up a witchy ancestor.

The diminutive wasn’t deliberate, but Florence seems too formal and she could never be anything as fussy as a Flossie or a Florrie.

So it’s Flo. Which seems to fit like a Start-rite shoe with Alfie. Both names suit kids more likely to be kicking each other with their trendy trainers than the charmingly old-fashioned, well brought-up, slightly eccentric Alfred and Florence we’d fondly imagined that our children might be.

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