Other cultures have very different ways of naming their children. In Bali, it depends on the order in which the children are born, and the names are the same for both boys and girls. There’s a name for the first-born, the second, the third and the fourth; if they have a fifth, they start the list again. We don’t even have to go as far as Indonesia; just across the channel in France, parents used to have to pick from a list of authorised names. That list was only abolished in 1993. Even this year, the name Derc’hen was banned because it contained an apostrophe , a decision described as "intolerable linguistic discrimination".