Since unique names are rare, most of us will share our most personal label with many others. Of over 700,000 Smiths in the UK, some 4,500 of them are called John. My own maiden name is not particularly common: last time I checked, there were only 16,446 fellow Gunns registered in the UK, most of them, not surprisingly, in the very north-east of Scotland around Wick and Thurso. Only about forty were called Susan.
