Michael Moynihan: All in a name — Why it's important to have a sense of perspective

People take names seriously. Too seriously? Perhaps, but then names are serious business

This is not re-heating the recent controversy about Páirc Uí Chaoimh. But it is worth pointing to the depth of feeling that that debate revealed. Picture Dan Linehan

Well done everyone on surviving January, which was longer this time round than during any other year in living memory. Those who quipped that this particular January lasted for nine weeks have a point: for a while there it looked like February would never announce itself.

January’s very name is part of the problem, redolent as it is of cold mornings and dark afternoons. The argument for renaming the month altogether, by folding the worst parts of post-December into the after-Christmas hangover, never seemed stronger: Januover, maybe. Or PreFeb.