Obiter’s application for a research grant to study the impact of combined firm names on perceptions of the profession is still languishing in the regulator’s inbox, but in the meantime here are a few contributions from our readers.

Jonathan Davidson of Liverpool firm QualitySolicitors Jackson & Canter is ahead of the game in warning Mackrell & Thomas Solicitors from Liverpool, Richardson’s from London, and Harrys Solicitors from Derby not to merge to create Tom, Dick and Harry.

Meanwhile, Nick Winney, assistant director, legal at the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, is disappointed that Dickinson Dees and Bond Pearce managed only to come up with Bond Dickinson ‘when there is such an obvious and more memorable option clearly evident’.

However, this week’s prize goes to retired Middlesex solicitor Mark Finburgh for recalling his dealings in the 1960s with two firms, Conn Goldberg and Practice Sharpe and Co. Unaccountably, ‘Sharpe Practice and Conn’ never came to be.