The names 'Thierry' (after Arsenal and France's Thierry Henry) and 'Cristiano' (after Manchester United and Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo) have been chosen by children in the diocese of Killaloe, against the wishes of their teachers.

The teachers' anger increased when one of the girls in the class opted for the name 'Gabrielle', after perhaps the most morally flexible of the characters in the hit TV series Desperate Housewives.

"Traditionally children picked a confirmation name to mark the new direction they were taking in their life, " said one of the teachers in the north Clare school. "This is a trend I have noticed over the last few years and we need to put a stop to it."

The Sunday Tribune has learned that . . . after the teachers at the school advised the confirmation class against using the bizarre names . . . the children identified some loopholes in the system that allowed them to continue using their preferred options.

The teacher explained: "We reminded the children that they should choose the name of a saint as their confirmation name. So 'Thierry' amended his name to 'Theo' after the saint Theo, 'Gabrielle' amended hers to Gabriel, again after the saint, and 'Cristiano' pointed out that his confirmation name was the Portuguese for Christopher.

"This has to stop as it has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. I am afraid that this could be the start of a new trend and it would probably be better to get rid of confirmation names altogether rather than allow this to continue."

Traditionally, children making their confirmation choose a saint's name, and that saint will then be the child's heavenly patron.