“Always delighted to welcome another John into the world although, these days, it is increasingly rare.”

That was a friend and former colleague's reaction on learning that my partner Angela and I had chosen to name our son, born on New Year's Eve, John.

Other friends and family have made similar observations. John is, well, clunkingly unfashionable - as shown by The Times's analysis last week of birth announcements in 2008 and by a list of the 100 most popular boys' names last year by Bounty.com, a parenting website. John was nowhere near the first list and 81st on the second - trailing the likes of Ashton, Kian and even Kai.

It's not as if all Biblical names have fallen out of fashion, with Joshua, Daniel and Thomas still in the top ten and Jacob, Joseph, Samuel and Luke close behind. But poor old John? Nowhere.

As David Wright, a Times reader wrote on the Letters page in Monday: “Where is John today?”

The vogue in recent years has been for names such as Fred or Archie - which, as the indie-rock group Half Man Half Biscuit memorably pointed out, boast “cheeky but loveable working class scamp connotations”.

The Biscuits, incidentally, warn middle-class mums to avoid such names - “unless you really do have plans for him to spend his life at William Hill's waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbot”.

We figure, however that, 15 years from now, when he is surrounded by scores of other lads called Ollie or Alfie, John is going to stand out a bit more.

Besides, there are scores of good role models bearing the name, both present and historical. Look past the current England captain and some of Britain's finest footballers have been Johns - the game's first superstar, Johnny Haynes, the sublimely gifted John Barnes and the Welsh legend John Charles, to name a few.

In cricket, with a definite bias to the bowlers, there have been John Emburey, John Lever and John Snow; in rugby, the Bristol and England hooker John Pullin, Scotland's John Rutherford and John Jeffrey, not to mention those two great Welshmen, J.P.R. Williams and Barry John.

In music, there are John Lennon, Johnny Marr and, of course, the much missed John Peel. In science, there are the astronomer and mathematician Sir John Herschel; in philosophy there is John Stuart Mill; in theatre and film, Sir John Mills and Sir John Gielgud. And in economics, John Maynard Keynes - who is very much the man of the moment even though he died in 1946.

It's time for John to make a comeback. Did you hear that, son?

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