My View:What's in a name? Quite a lot when it's Bear Payne

HE will probably rub shoulders with other celebrity babies with equally out there names, but Cheryl Cole and Liam Payne's choice of name for their new off spring has caused quite a stir.

The choice of name, Bear, was revealed to the world this week.

They are not the first celebrity parents to plump for the adventurous moniker, following Jamie and Jools Oliver whose five-year-old son is called Buddy Bear.

Kate Winslet and Alicia Silverstone has also named their children Bear.

However when you find out that baby Bear is to take daddy’s surname then the decision does seem to be a strange one.

Fans, and critics, took to social media after the announcement to decry the name Bear Payne.

“It will be a great one for the playground bullies - bare pain - what were they thinking,” said one Twitter critic.

I’m not sure with Cheryl and Liam as parents bullying will be too much of an issue as it is very likely baby Bear will be at a school where he will be sitting in class with equally, if not more, outrageous names.

Towards the end of 2016, celebrity stars welcomed babies called Mabel (Russel Brand), River (Jamie Oliver), Wolf (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) Ines (Blake Lively), Deveraux (Mick Jagger) and Lula rose (Liv Tyler).

Even among the non celebrities there has been a rise in, how shall we put it, less convention names.

Last year boys’ names with notable increases in popularity were ‘Reggie’ (up 59 per cent) - most likely influenced by Rastamouse star Reggie Yates but possibly Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Reggie Kray in the 2015 film ‘Legend’ - and ‘Ezra’ (up 77 per cent ), which can be attributed to the world famous ‘Budapest’ singer, George Ezra. Other trending boys’ names on the rise are Jaxon, Arlo and Carter.

Ironically baby name site, Baby Centre has its top name for boys born in March this year as Bear’s dad’s name Liam.

But despite the trend for unusual names, Oliver remains at the top of the charts for baby boys in the UK.

Cheryl and Liam took six weeks to decide on Bear as they wanted to get to know their son before naming him.

We took quite some time naming our two when they were born all too aware of the responsibility of giving a child a name they were stuck with for life. We erred on the side of caution, opting for biblical or Queens for first names and family for middle names, although my children still moan about our choices. May be we should have chosen something more adventurous like the name of a fruit or wild animal.