HERE is a conundrum for our image-conscious time. What reads the same backwards as forwards, contains a passing reference to an old Vauxhall car and sounds like Latin but isn't?

Yes, it's Aviva, the suggested new name for CGNU, the insurance conglomerate that is partly based in York. The word is a palindrome, reading the same backwards and forwards - or, to put it more cynically, making little sense whichever way up you hold it.

Now it is true that the old acronym was hard to chew on. It sounded like a gnu that had foraged on the plains and accidentally picked up an extra letter it could not shake off its nose.

That cumbersome collision of letters represented an amalgamation of three insurance firms, Commercial Union, General Accident and Norwich Union. In these days when image is all, that ugly snatch of the alphabet is apparently no longer forward looking enough, hence the change.

Where each of the three old names spoke of solidity and purpose, and gave brass-engraved clues to the business they followed, Aviva is a name from the vacuous modern mould.

It could mean anything or nothing; it might stand for something or it might not; and it could apply to any firm, having just the right ring of non-specific blandness favoured by followers of "blue sky thinking".

There is a funny story about Aviva and it runs like this. CGNU apparently spent £1 million on hiring image consultants to dream up the new name. And all the while, a flower shop just 300 yards up the road from the firm's Norwich headquarters already had the same name. The florist came up with it herself, over a cup of coffee.

It's astonishing the money corpor-ations will spend on a name, and if you're thinking of re-training, why not tick the box marked "image consultant".

It can't be that difficult. All that happens is a firm asks you to concoct a new name, you spend a while thinking about it, possibly over a nice long lunch or two, then come up with a preposterous cod-Latin tag and charge a million for your services.

Before Aviva there was Consignia, a new suit of emperor's clothes for the old Post Office. That one cost £3 million - yes, three million quid for a name that no one likes, which has nothing to do with the business at hand, and which should be consigned to the bin as soon as possible.

The Post Office was a simple, solid appellation whereas Consignia is modishly vague and very annoying.

There is clearly a market for going about re-naming things.

So let's have a go.

New Labour is a bit old hat now, so it is time for a change. As a word ending in the letter 'a' seems to be in vogue, this column's team of consultants has, after a long working lunch (or a quick walk round the block, to give this process its proper technical name), come up with Spinertia.

Someone else has already suggested that the Conservative Party could be called the Blues. This has a ring, because it's what they've got now and what they used to give so many of us.

Or the Tories could always shed that bothersome "tive" and emerge as the newly nonsensical Conserva.

This column, by the way, is considering the merits of being re-christened as Invectiva.

And while we're about it, letter writers to this page continue to complain about City Of York Council's policy of giving free bus travel to its employees.

In light of this, it has come to my attention that the shuttle bus service is now to be re-christened Perk and Ride.

Updated: 10:28 Thursday, March 07, 2002