On April 27, Orlando Bloom revealed on US chat show, Live with Regis and Kelly, why he and his wife, model Miranda Kerr, called their baby son Flynn.

The name is a tribute to his grandmother Evelyn, who passed away last year just as Flynn was conceived. Orlando says he was convinced that they were going to have a girl, and naturally they chose the name Evelyn for her. When the new baby proved to be a boy, that idea had to be shelved (even though technically Evelyn is a unisex name, that is possibly a heavy burden to place on a modern boy).

I guess this helps explain the delay in announcing Flynn’s name, and demonstrates why you need a back-up plan for baby names!

As Evelyn for the baby was now off-limits, they apparently chose the name Flynn because of its similarity to the name Evelyn. Do you see the amazing likeness? Yeah, me neither. The Blooms are part of a popular movement of choosing “honouring names” which have only a tenuous connection to the name of the person actually honoured.

In the past, you didn’t get “honoured”, you had a baby named after you. If your name was Kenneth, the baby was called Kenneth. If the parents didn’t like the name Kenneth, the baby’s name was James Kenneth. Girl babies could be given feminine forms of a male name, so Samuel’s grand-daughter was called Samantha. Name variants were also used, so grandmothers called Mary brought forth Marians and Marilyns, while great-aunts named Elizabeth spawned a host of Isabels and Elspeths. Nifty parents sometimes managed to combine two people’s names in one, so if your uncle was called Julian and your godmother was called Lianna, you ended up being named Julianna. But that was about as creative as the average family got.

Then for some reason, baby name websites and blogs started the idea of “honouring names”, which were a lot more flexible. For parents who were leery of using a particular name, the list of advice on name substitutes became almost endless.

Suppose you didn’t care for Great-Great Grandma Margaret’s name – well, why not Pearl? It means the same thing! Or maybe just pick a name with the same initial as Margaret, such as Mia. Or what about a name with the same number of letters, like Claudine? Or one ending in the same letter, such as Harriet? Or what about Meredith, that sounds kind of like Margaret, right? Right?

Now if the name is still sounding too horribly close to the actual name of the person, you can really think outside the box. Another suggestion is to forget their name and what it sounds like entirely – instead, choose something that reminds you of them, like the state they were born, the car they drove, their favourite pie filling, or the colour of their eyes. Someone else might not think that a baby called Tasmania Volkswagen Cherry Blue sounds like it’s named after your favourite primary school teacher, but it is! Somehow.

Imagine my name is Anna (not exactly a stretch, as it happens). I would be terribly pleased if someone were to name their child after me – ecstatic even. If they changed it to Anne, Annette, Annie, Nanette or Nancy, I would be understanding, as Anna doesn’t suit every surname and middle name. If they changed it to Anya or Hannah, I would try to be tolerant about it, but my enthusiasm would definitely wane. If they made the name Anastasia (an unrelated but similar-sounding name) or Grace (a name with a similar meaning), I would pretty much tell them to shove it. Suggestions that a girl called Alexandra or Emma, or a boy called Andrew or Elijah, was “named in my honour” would be met with unbridled scorn and a mental note to scrub them off the Christmas card list.

But that’s the thing – I can make my wishes known to any potential honour-bestowers, because I am still alive. Those who have passed on cannot, unless they leave express instructions in their wills (which probably aren’t legally binding anyway). And in the main, the longer a relative has been dead, the more people feel able to make free with their names.

Whether Second Cousin Desmond is thrilled that he has descendants called Declan, Destiny and Edmond “in his honour” we shall never know, because Second Cousin Desmond has gone into the Great Beyond, from Whence none can return.

Perhaps all the more reason we should err on the side of caution before we start getting too creative with the names of people we hold in honour.

NOTE: The full interview with Orlando Bloom is available here: