Why Liz is in a tizz

I don't have much in common with Liz Hurley. My lips are not like pillows. I don't own a single Versace dress. I have never given birth, or worn sunglasses on the top of my head. But we do happen to share one thing. Or at least we did, until this morning, when I learnt that my more manicured namesake cannot stand being called Liz.

Apparently, according to German InStyle magazine, she gets really annoyed when the paparazzi bay the name "Liz" at premieres and the like. "None of my friends call me Liz," she said crossly. "I don't like Liz because it suggests a familiarity which does not exist." She even threatened to move to Switzerland if we don't all start calling her by her proper name, Elizabeth.

I don't think familiarity is an issue here, as her former boyfriend Hugh Grant routinely refers to her as "Elizabeth". She simply doesn't like being a Liz. It is too plain, too short, and takes up too little space. Not at all the image she wants to project.

I was christened Elizabeth not, sadly, after Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but after Elizabeth Taylor, which was fine when she was starring opposite Richard Burton in The V.I.P.s, not quite so inspiring as she started to befriend Michael Jackson and wear kaftans.

But, apart from a brief spell at school when I was a "Lizzie", which led to the unfortunate nickname of "Dripping", I have always been a Liz.

Everyone calls me that, including my bank manager, my best friend and my husband (if he started calling me Elizabeth, I would think he was about to ask for a divorce). It's a no-nonsense name, but also I think quite sexy, in a way that Beth, Betty and Lilybet (the Queen Mother's rather winsome moniker) aren't.

Our name, mine and Miss Hurley's, the long and the short version, has been out of fashion for a few years while the more, shall we say, gimmicky names found favour, the Summers and the Peaches of this world. I can only think of one current pop star with the name Liz, and she is an Atomic Kitten, so doesn't really count.

But, according to my friend India (who gave herself that name by deed poll aged 16; always a solution, but you definitely have to do so before you become famous), fancy names are on the way out.

"Below-stairs" names - the Mays, the Nells and the Marys - are all the rage among the inhabitants of Islington and Primrose Hill, apparently. For boys, plain old Archie is making a comeback.

Not that this helps poor Liz. We all grow into our names (have you ever met a boring Carmen?), and I am afraid she, like me, has grown into hers. To be an Elizabeth, you really have to be quite classy, which she ain't. Changing your name mid-career, as Jennifer Lopez, Puff Daddy and Prince have, smacks, quite simply, of desperation.