So you set out in life with the name your parents give you and make the most of it, since it's going to follow you around wherever you go. For Chinese people, however, all this changes once they start English lessons, and suddenly they are given a Christian name.

My daughter recently came home from her local school full of pride at the new name she had been baptized with by her Chinese English teacher. "Call me Scooter!" she proudly announced. Oh dear, I thought, but didn't let on, since the only Scooter I had ever heard of was a disgraced American politician surnamed Libby. I felt even sorrier for her schoolmates, as they were named after other modes of transport or vegetables: Trike, Motorbike, Carrot and Pumpkin.

"Star", as the English teacher calls herself, deserves credit for her attempt to expand the vocabulary of her charges in such an imaginative way, but it does remind me of the dictum: "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."