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I think all names that are overused suddenly fall out of favour and become underused before the pendulum swings back. But, sometimes the pendulum doesn't ... think Gladys, which used to be megapopular and has just quietly sunk into oblivion. And the world is changing so fast that it's probably not safe to generalise from the past. I don't think that currently unpopular classic names like Ruth and Margaret will ever vanish, and I don't expect many Caitlyns, MaKenzees etc in 25 years from now, but there are more names in circulation than ever before, so the chances that the people living next door to several million young Shirleys will wake up one morning and decide to give their own future daughters some other name are probably getting smaller. The point about celebrity names and surname names and soap-opera names is that there are few enough of them to stand out in a crowd of little Ms Averages. (Same with people who carry on about the increase in crime - if it really was that frequent, we'd all have stopped noticing ...) Ava's a pretty bland little name, but so was Jennifer! I don't expect it to take off, but it might.

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What fascinates me about celebrity names is how some of them just don't catch on, however popular the celeb. Once, for one year, a friend of mine taught an Elvis. And when Garbo was at her apex, how many little Gretas were there? Come to think of it, Ava Gardner took a long time to impact on naming habits ... !