What’s in a celebrity baby name? Well, that all depends on which direction you’re facing

Nancy, Frank Jnr and Christina were good enough for Frank Sinatra, so why do Kanye and Kim require something so much more exotic?

Frank Sinatra had three children – Nancy, Frank Jnr and Christina. Judy Garland’s children were called Liza, Lorna and Joey. Paul McCartney went for Stella, James, Mary and Beatrice. And Lisa Marie was good enough for Elvis Presley.

Four giants of 20th-century entertainment who – for some unfathomable reason – passed up the opportunity to give their children the kind of really distinctive name that could have allowed them to get on in life. What were they thinking of?

The move away from homogeneity in names is true throughout society, but for sheer outlandishness, the world of celebrity is very much a law unto itself. And while this tendency has been around for a while, the news that Kanye West’s newborn is to be called North suggests that a line has been crossed. It’s one thing for Wayne Rooney – to pick just one example – to name his children Kai and Klay, which one might say falls merely into the category of different for its own sake. But the bad-joke urge expressed in North West is something else. How close, we must wonder, was poor North to being called South? Or North-by-North? Or Points? Whichever direction she goes in, we wish her well.