There’s nothing remotely funny in it at all, though; in fact it’s extremely sad and cruel. There may be nothing attractive, to modern ears, in the rather harsh, belching sound of the name Gertrude (though I’m quite fond of it myself) and the likes of Mabel, Ethel and Edna are indelibly attached, even now, to the image of an old lady in a hairnet, possibly nursing a half pint of mild.

Likewise Arnold, Edgar, Herbert and Percy are the stuff, bless them, of Remembrance Day roll-calls but the most obvious “problem” with all these names, as well as more acceptable ones such as Sidney, Arthur and Frank or Florence, Lillian, Annie, Olive and Margaret, which are also vanishing, according to research, is simply that they confer too much character.

After all, at the heart of the strange baby names phenomenon is the need for parents to feed their own,  outsized egos: they want their baby to have an unusual name to make themselves look cutting-edge, it has nothing to do with how the poor child might be regarded at all.

If a mythical Wayne and Debbie were to name their child Arthur or Lillian, it would lend so much gravitas to the child their pram would tip up, whereas Wayne, Debbie and little Yamaha (or Gwyneth, Chris and Apple) turns the spotlight back on the parents. “Oooh what a strange/funny name,” their mates will say. “Aren’t you clever/strange/unpredictable.”

Names are a matter of fashion and nobody can pretend that Hortense, Eustacia or Winifred fall in line with modern tastes but such names were, in the past, a link with family members old or possibly deceased: grandfathers and grandmothers with clacking false teeth, favourite aunts who lived in decaying houses with all the windows flung open.

With so many family groups these days fractured or dysfunctional that continuity disappears: Chanelle and Kiefer are at the forefront of a new generation and they are as unlikely to be gifted with Mary or Norman as a middle name as they are to be christened in church.

Will they pass their names on? Will their grandchildren also be called Chanelle? I doubt it. These are frothy, transient names for a frothy, transient age. The 60-year-old Kylies will be a lost race.

It all points to a break with the past. As much as family history has been disregarded or ceases to exist in any meaningful way so does the history of our country itself. Will Kiefer get the chance to connect with the Armada or the Rennaisance, the Norman Conquest or the Battle Of Bosworth Field? I doubt it. We don’t really look back in that sort of detail any more; we don’t dare.

It may be snobbish to suggest that there’s no faith or ambition invested in a child with an odd name but when the anchor lines, not just of the past and of tradition but of humanity itself have fallen away so entirely that a child can be called Amstrad, you have to wonder what, if any, hope the parents have for that child.

What’s in a name? Everything: what we are, what we were, what we hope to be and, most sadly of all, what we can never be again.