This is a memoir by a yoga teacher in Norfolk who, when faced with a reconciliation to her estranged Nigerian father, came to look at her identity through the names she'd been given, and the ones she'd chosen to use in her life. 

Camilla Balshaw was born in Luton. Her parents split up when she was a child and her father went back to Nigeria. Her mum was from Jamaica. Both Camilla's siblings had Nigerian names but she was called Amanda, or Mandy.  

As a child, she had played with her name, asking for it to be spelt in different ways - Mandi, Mandee. Then she discovered on her birth certificate that in fact she was called Camilla. She came to use this as an adult, though struggled to persuade her family to adopt it. This despite her mother, being called Carmen, also using the name Carmel...

This book is partly a memoir of Camilla's life and her understanding and appreciation of her family background, but also her research into the importance of names. 

She shares her difficult relationship with her father, but also some interesting details about names, discovered in her own investigation into the subject. 

Different cultures have different traditions, she says, for example in America and the UK it's common to have two given names, but this isn't typical in other countries. Women were often given male names in the Middle Ages. A study found that boys in America, if given names more commonly associated with girls, were more likely to misbehave and attain lower scores in tests. 

Camilla collects people with appropriate names - Mr Baker who runs a bakery, for example, or a birdwatcher called Elaine Starling and a tree-hugger Hannah Willow. She looks at the incidents of double-barrelled surnames and muses on how footballer Gary Neville's father is called Neville Neville. There are funny stories, too. A quote from Terry Pratchett reads: 'Luck is my middle name. Mind you, my first name is Bad.'

But perhaps the crux of the book is summed up through the American writer Ralph Ellison who said: 'We must first come into possession of our own names. For it is through our names that we first place ourselves in the world.' An interesting and enjoyable read.