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Some of the names babies were still commonly given around the time I was being christened Daniel are now a long way out of fashion, according to a baby and parenting website called .

Percy, Gertrude, and even Norman now sound very old fashioned - and I grew up with a lot of Normans. Daniel, on the other hand, is far more popular than when my parents took the bold step of giving me an alliterative name.

But the point of this post is to ask what's happened to fashion in names in other cultures? Are there more Osamas around than there were, or fewer? More Slobodans or fewer? How many Baracks are being registered these days?

Boys were being called Norman because of the Norman conquest, apparently. There are thousands of Atilas in Hungary, despite the generally poor reputation in the West of Attila the Hun, remembered for ravaging Italy and forcing the locals to flee to islands on which they established Venice.

What's the history behind your own name?

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