NAMES FOR NAMELESS THINGS

As if it wasn't bad enough that she sold the announcement to Hello, Geri Halliwell has lumbered her baby with a rotten name.

Bluebell Madonna Halliwell.

Why? In God's name, why?

"SCARLETT was a name I loved, as SCARLETT O'HARA was my fictional heroine. I seemed to recall she had a daughter who was called BLUE. I thought that was cute - and Bluebell was even cuter.

"As I walked around the park in the last few weeks of pregnancy, I seemed to see bluebells everywhere.

"There's a good reason I picked Madonna as a middle name, too. As she came out of my tummy, Bluebell had both arms wide in the air as if announcing, 'Hi, I'm here.' She was screaming her head off, as though she was shouting, 'Hello Wembley.' "No one else has that name, apart from the Virgin Madonna and the singer, who I love."

Nobody else has the name? Are you sure, love?

Although it fell a little out of popularity during the 1960s, and never a big favourite amongst secular households, Madonna was still the 1,176th most common name (out of over 4,000 tracked) at the time of the 1990 Census. It's also a not uncommon surname; as a first name, it's even more popular in Catholic countries.

However, there is someone who doesn't have the name, and that would be the holy virgin, who (if Geri had checked a book) was called Mary. Madonna is used to refer to her in its actual sense of My Lady.

To be fair to Geri, though, it is the name of a singer. So she wasn't totally wrong.

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