Names Of The Week (11)

Naming a child is one of the most important things parents can do, but it is a fraught business. Do you play safe or show some imagination? If you are blessed with more than one child, do you adopt a thematic approach to naming them.

Belgian couple, Gwenny Blanckaert and Marino Vaneeno, named their firstborn Alex and their second child Axel. Realising that they had begun a theme, they named their other nine children using the same four-letter combination – Xela, Lexa, Xael, Xeal, Exla, Leax, Xale, Elax, and Alxe.

It is not clear whether they stopped at eleven children simply because they had exhausted the combinations that the letters a, e, l, and x offered.

Still, I bet they are good at Scrabble and Wordsearch.