Letter: Aka, alias ugly

Sir: Whatever happened to 'alias', as in 'Brown alias Jones'? In his article 'A tabloid coup d'etat' (7 October), Conor Cruise O'Brien writes of 'Philip Francis aka Junius'. Yes, we know what it stands for but how ugly and redundant]

My wife's late aunt was a schoolteacher in the New Zealand village of Aka Aka. Is that where it all started?

Yours truly,

ARTHUR JACOBS

Oxford