John

'You've struck a sore point there', says the lady in the shop in a small village near the sea.  Outside is a blackboard on which was written 'WINE' and 'CHARCOAL'.  We are buying eggs, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, muesli and yogurt.  All the hummus has been snappled by other wedding guests. 

'My mother didn't believe in long names', she says.  Her first name is a single syllable.  'She didn't want to give us names that could be shortened', she says.  'She didn't realise that you could lengthen them'.  She tells us that she has long regretted the fact that she wasn't given a middle name.  Today's, instead, belongs to her son ('What's it for?' asked her mother when she saw his birth certificate).

'You can't be an English cricketer without at least a few names', she says.  I tell her I'd never noticed that.  'Look it up', she says.

(Later, I google the English test squad that will face Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates.  I don't notice a huge propensity towards multiple names but most of them do, at least have one middle.  They are John, Nathan, Michael (x2), Ronald, Singh (x2), Thomas, Joseph Gerard, Peter (x2), James and Jonathan Leonard.  Stuart Broad and Graham Onions buck the trend and remain without.)