What would you do if your child came back from school one day and told you she had a boy in her class called Cleavage?

Surely, you would think, there's a mistake somewhere? But no, there isn't. Cross my heart: it's a real name given to a real boy in Malta. His mother, bless her, is delirious with pride that her son has a unique name: "I had to register it, as there's no one else with that name," she told a friend of mine.

Here's another real one: a father accompanying his toddler to the clinic told a doctor his daughter's name was Dyslexia but, sorry, he wasn't sure how to spell it.

Another mother gave her daughter a practically unpronounceable nine-letter name. She explained her word-game strategy: "Every month during my pregnancy I chose a letter and then at the end of the nine months, I jumbled them up and came up with this name."

Another parent was equally haughty about the 'avant-garde' names she gave her sons. "This one is Skylander," she said as she pushed them to the front, "And this one is Cleverson. Eh? What do you think?"

What do you think indeed? We've all heard of Jurassic Pace, of Britney Spears Borg, or Celine Dion Darmanin, Mysharona Brincat. Why, I had even heard of Jack Daniels Falzon. But Dyslexia? Cleavage?

If I'm honest, this is the stuff of severe attacks of giggles. I mean, Cleverson? Are we resorting to Red Indian nomenclature now? What ever next? Dances-with-wolves Vella?

But then when I wondered if these were just one-offs and was firmly told they are, in certain areas, quite the norm, it felt like a slap in the face. You would think you know the society you live in. Here I am, week in week out, writing about social issues when really half the population is simply concerned about having babies just so they can give them more original names than their neighbours' children.

I wouldn't like to think that parents inflict such torturous names on their children on purpose. So the problem is, of course, sheer, utter ignorance. And I can say this safe in the knowledge that no one will be hurt reading this article, because parents of these kids cannot know how to read in English. I hope, against hope, that at least they do read in Maltese - but I have my doubts.

Because it's not just the names. It's other things too. Here's another incident, which I know sounds like a 'have you heard the one about?': A lady patient was given suppositories to treat a particular ailment. She went back a couple of days later, complaining that she couldn't swallow them.

The doctor politely explained that she has to insert them in her patata (bottom). She returned some days later baffled because try as she might, she just couldn't get the suppositories to melt in mashed potatoes. My friend, stumped, had no choice but to resort to the vernacular of 'arse' in Maltese. "Oh. Why didn't you say so, immediately?" said the woman.

Again I can vouch this is a real story. And so is the one about the woman who was diagnosed with a cardiac murmur, and told the nurse that they had found a mermaid in her heart. Or the fact that hundreds of women - teenagers and twenty-somethings - do not know how to say period. They say 'imperial'!

And this is very worrisome. If you don't know the proper name of something that you get every month of your life, it means that you just repeat the sounds you hear, parrot-like, and you don't bother to improve when corrected, and you are illiterate.

It is simply unacceptable for the new generations to be unable to read basic English. There is simply no excuse for it. My own grandmother, now in her 80s, never learnt English at school. She just painstakingly took up reading and kept at it, and last week even won the Bookworm of the Year at our local library.

I'm not claiming to be a clever clogs but, if people do not read, how can they actually think? I suddenly have this nagging fear that our society is made up, mostly, of people who do not think. Yet they have a vote. And they get to decide on very important things such as referenda issues. I shudder to think how they can decide on concepts they can't even grasp.

Perhaps it's time we stopped laughing at ignorance and started taking serious action, by for example, insisting on stricter rules at the Department of Public Registry: 'Cleavage' is one name that should have been categorically rejected.

krischetcuti@gmail.com