It troubles me that Jack is the most popular name for boys for the thirteenth year in a row. Obviously it’s slightly flattering that so many people want to name their children after me (I can’t think why else — the sudden surge in popularity coincided with me at university, where I can only presume all my fellow universiteers kept going home to their respective towns and telling everyone how there was this really wonderful, handsome and sexy chap they knew at university called Jack, and how everyone should name their children after him), but at the same time, the fact it is top of the list for the thirteenth year in a row tells us some other things as well.

Firstly, one of the things I liked about my name when I was a child was that it was unusual. Everyone knew the name Jack, but seemingly no-one else was called it. This did have some disadvantages — I never managed to get any of those souvenir pens with my name pre-printed on it, and I once had an argument with a supply teacher who insisted that my name wasn’t really Jack (in the end it turned out that I knew my name better than the person who had never actually met me before), but on the whole it was great to have a slightly unusual name.

It meant that I was generally very well-known at school. If you said ‘Peter’, or ‘David’, or ‘Simon’, you could have been any one of a dozen or so kids at the senior school. But there was only ever one Jack, and pretty much most people knew who I was. This might be in part to my personality, and the devilishly handsome good looks and charm I mentioned before, but the name also made it more memorable.

Only now it would appear that every Tom, Dick and Harry is called Jack.

And not only does that lumber all of the Jacks with the need to have some other defining trait permanently attached to their name to identify them (“Jack with the big nose”, “thicko Jack from 8B” or whatever), but it also seems to demonstrate a remarkable lack of imagination on behalf of the parents. Yes, it is a nice name (obviously) but when it seems like there is going to be at least two of them in every class, it no longer carries the idea of originality and difference it once did. For kids growing up in the next ten to fifteen years, being a Jack is no longer to stand out: it is to be one of the herd.

You’re now more likely to stand out of the crowd by being ‘every Tom, Dick and Harry’; although admittedly Harry and Tom are still popular, for some reason Dick is now less so. I suspect because parents are very aware that calling their child ‘Dick’ may lead to, shall we say, issues, at school. Perhaps we should simply update the phrase to ‘every Tom, Jack and Harry’?

But if Jacks are no longer able to stand out from the crowd simply by means of their name, perhaps they will stand out for some other reason. When I was a kid, all of the Jacks I knew at school were intelligent, witty, articulate, sparkling children, if possibly a little mischievous and with a tendency to take the piss out of people. Mind you, it was a survey sample of one.

Now it would appear that teachers recognise Jack as the third ‘naughtiest’ name (although while it was the 3rd naughtiest, it did also seem to be associated with the most popular children).

So if you don’t want your child to follow the herd and be perceived by teachers as likely to be poorly behaved, don’t call them Jack. Let 2009 be the year when some other name finally gets a turn at the top of the list, and lets not add to the already oversized collection of Jacks in the UK — particularly since we don’t even have a decent collective noun for Jacks… maybe

— if you can come up with a decent one, please do tweet it to the all-sorts collective noun list using the following format:

A thirteen-years-worth-of-domination-of-the-list of Jacks #collectivenouns

…don’t forget the #collectivenouns hashtag. This is needed to ensure that the all-sorts program sweeps it up correctly and adds it to the list. If you come up with a good enough one, people may ‘vote’ for it by retweeting it to make it more popular (e.g. my conspiracy of theorists gathered 7 votes).

But if we’re going to have a country of people called Jack, then for goodness sake, let’s get a decent collective noun going for it at least…