If you really want to know the value of your property, forget the estate agents and just check out the under-fives names on the road. Poppy, Daisy, Fleur, Lukka and Charley all point towards strong equity. And don't even think of copying any of those names, as that's a mortal offence.

If you're one of those people whose child's name appears in the Central Statistics Office 25 Most Popular Baby Names, (Sean, Emma, Katie, Jack, Conor etc), go and hang your head in shame for having such poor imagination and appalling lack of research skills.

Because believe it or not being individual in your choice of baby names is yet another way to assert your upwardly mobile status in the new Ireland.

But the growing importance attached to babies' names isn't just an Irish phenomenon, although since our new-found wealth there's an alarming number of toddlers and infants around called Sebastian, Alexander, Charles and Henry, along with their sisters Clara, Lara and Zara. According to the Yahoo search engine, 'unusual' is the most frequently used search term coupled with 'baby names', followed by 'unique baby names' as a close second. Perhaps this is where Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes found Suri, the name they will inflict on their new daughter.

Author Laura Wattenburg, who has done extensive research into why parents choose the baby names they do, talks about the conformity curve in the US.

The 1940s and 50s were indeed the peak of modern conformity, and we've been stalking uniqueness more and more ever since, " she says, explaining that during those years, one-quarter of all boys and girls born bore the top 10 names in the country. A similar pattern followed in Ireland, where almost every family had a Mary and John up until the mid-60s.

The 1960s marked a sharp drop in conformity. An even sharper decline began in the 1980s, the first generation of parents raised with the '60s in the rear-view mirror. At the same time, the novelty rate . . . the adoption of new names into the core naming pool . . . has been accelerating, a portrait of the curious cultural phenomenon called 'lockstep individualism'. Across regions, races and classes, thousands of parents are united by a common bond: their mutual determination to be nothing like each other, " says Wattenburg.

The bad news is that no matter how individual your child's name is, it won't be for long, according to Dr Alex Bentley of University College London and Matthew Hahn of Duke University in the US, whose research claims that mathematics and basic population genetics prove that regardless of how unusual your baby's name is today, chances are it will be very common in the future.

?Some parents today who invent an original name for their baby, like 'Grast', could unwittingly be determining the names of thousands of children 10 years from now, " says Bentley.

Using British and US government data, Bentley and Hahn tracked the popularity of the top 1,000 first names for baby girls and boys for every decade in the 20th century. ?Through basic population genetics, we can predict about how common the most popular one will be, " says Bentley.

?We found that girls have a 40% higher chance of getting a unique name than boys, " says Hahn. ?I'd bet that this has a lot to do with life in a patriarchal society, where boys more often get traditional names. It might also show the 'playground effect' , , boys with unusual names are going to be teased mercilessly."

Even Irish names, which apparently are very much in vogue these days even outside Ireland, (there's a website where American parents-to-be can download the sound of author Frank McCourt pronouncing 'unusual Irish names'), carry their own unspoken status symbols. Siobhan, Aine, Mairead, Seamus and Padraig are so out in certain circles, having been replaced with the trendier Guire, Setanta, Naoise, Eabha and Faibhe. And if your child's name isn't in the latter list, you're probably not in the right gaelscoil.

The unspoken social importance of names has for many years been the subject of much research, particularly in the US, where the 'blackness' or 'whiteness' of names has clear implications.

Identical (fake) curriculum vitaes were sent to employers with traditional white names and 'black'' or immigrant-sounding names. The 'white-sounding' applicants received a significantly higher number of interviews.

In 'The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names'' by white economist Steven Levitt and black economist Roland G Fryer Jnr, data from over 16 million births in California dating back to 1961 were studied in depth.

The study, which is one of the most detailed carried out to date concluded that those with distinctively 'black' names had a worse outcome regarding future income, education and life experience, not because of their name but because black children receiving ultra 'black' names were more likely to be born into poverty than those of either race given more common 'white' or European names.

However, the name game isn't one that many of our European neighbours have to worry about, simply because certain governments including Denmark, Germany, Slovakia and France have restrictions on what name you give your child and, if you want to be creative, you must apply to the courts for approval.

In Denmark, new parents can only choose from a pre-approved list of 7,000 names, (3,000 for boys and 4,000 for girls), mostly West European and English names. And it's only in recent years that a small number of ethnic names like Ali or Hassan have been added to the list.

Any requests for un-approved names results in a review at Copenhagen University's Names Investigation Department, and also at the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs.

And in Germany, parents are not allowed to create double-barrel surnames for their offspring, with hyphenated names considered illegal. A child's first name must also clearly indicate their gender. An appeal to name a boy Jesus was recently upheld by a Frankfurt court simply because it's widely known that Jesus Christ was male. On the other hand, a couple's application to name their daughter Chanel was turned down on the basis that it's a brand name.

Luckily no such restrictions apply in Ireland, but if you really want your child's name to stand out, why not opt for plain old Jane, Mary, Susan or Jim.

Chances are they'll be the only toddler in the creche with that name.