The game of the name isn’t easy

Say hello to Mark, Kevin and Stuart, partners at Yorkshire architectural firm the Arthur Quarmby Partnership.

The practice is changing its name to mark the beginning of a new image for the Huddersfield consultancy. Out goes Arthur Quarmby (who remains in person as a consultant), and in comes One Seventeen AD.

To explain, the name is a coded reference to Arthur’s initials, AQ. The numbered equivalent of A and Q are one and seventeen (A being the first letter of the alphabet, Q the seventeenth). AD, by the way, signifies both a new birth/resurrection type-thing and A for architects, D for designers.

All well and good. Except the only other organisation we know of which uses the same letter/number is Combat 18.

That’s 1 for A and 8 for H. It’s named after Adolf Hitler. And the Combat bit – that’s because

Combat 18 is as into racial violence as One Seventeen AD is into perspectives. Boys, maybe you should have called in an identity consultancy on this one.