A friendly customer at the pizza shop I work at has for years made all of his orders under the name Frank. He recently moved away but before he left, he pulled me aside during a quiet moment, leaned in and confessed. "My name is not really Frank. It's Tim."

When he said this I felt a pang of respect for he who had bravely exercised this form of escape from the punitive shackles of our shared name. Every time one has to say "Tim" out loud, it is with a renewed surprise at how little space the name occupies in a room.

For reasons that will become more obvious, I have failed over the course of this column to ever stop and focus on one of my most cherished sports articles written by Martin Amis for The New Yorker  22 years ago. Amis, a novelist and a tennis man, was writing about Tim Henman, who was then the first among British males to challenge the echelons of world tennis for some time.

Tim Henman celebrates after a second round match win at Wimbledon in 2002. Credit:AP

"In my view," wrote Amis, "Tim's real distinction has never been properly assessed … he is the first human being called Tim to achieve anything at all." Henman, ironically (or perhaps not) never made a grand slam final, despite his style and capability.

I'm confident that, had I not shared Henman's weightless moniker, I would have savagely cheered Amis for this comic observation, but as a Tim of relative youth when I came upon that piece, it felt unwise to give up on things so early.

There is in that article, now famous among discerning Tims, several lines to gently break the hearts of parents, who, out of some misplaced generosity, failed to register as Amis did that "the name lacks all gravity". If all three syllables of the slightly more reinforced promise of 'Timothy' were more commonly spoken, Amis' piece would not have endured as it has. But there is something in the name that refuses to be annunciated beyond Tim, a syllable that as a first defence between the world and one's self is no more effective than a tissue.

I mention the Amis bit now, during a minor sporting lull around town, because it surfaced from wherever I'd buried it during the Ashes series in England. Tim Paine, representing so well, became jeered as a "stand-in captain", and was even blamed for Australia's loss at Headingley, having apparently lost his nerve during the descending gloom of Ben Stokes' heroics.

Kiss this: Tim Paine with the Ashes urn. Credit:AP

The Tims sitting up to watch that match could feel it rising during that innings, the gnawing suggestion from the bar flies that the one among our ranks who had risen to such sporting office as Paine's, had in fact done so via subterfuge and by default. The missed review, the field placements. How was this happening to us? I could almost feel the dagger twisting in my chest when Stokes' cover drove the winning boundary. Paine had it all right there in his gloves, you see, the release of Ashes glory, ready to shower over the rest of us all.

"It's easy enough to see how this happened," wrote Amis in '97. "The Tims of the world had all of their ambitions crushed, their aspirations dashed by being called 'Timmy' during childhood. 'Hello Timmy' — imagine what that does to you, after the first few thousand times."

I did in the days after Australia's loss begin a quick search for other sporting Tims who have carried this burden with success, and arrived with some relief at Tim Cahill, an obvious Australian legend. After that you reach, with gratitude, Tim Duncan, an NBA god who gripped the chair and survived the psychological breakdown of being addressed on the court as "Timmy" during his formative years. Tim Duncan proved for all of us a decent antithesis to Amis' theory, having been selected with the first pick in the 1997 NBA draft, the same year of the article's publication.

No introduction needed: Tim Cahill. Credit:Christopher Pearce

There are at least two Tims in English writing that have engaged with this odd banter, notably Tim Dowling of the Guardian, an American writer who wrote in reference to Amis' comments, "the only way to escape this fate is to fight the prevailing stereotype from within". Dowling even suggested that he seeks common cause with other Tims on Twitter, "including the author Tim Moore who appends the hashtag #TimArmy to replies".

"But he's being ironic," Dowling said, "We're not proud, and we cannot be united … in the real world it's every Tim for himself."

One could carry on in vain, defending the honour of Tims everywhere with a list of notables bearing the name, but it would only invite a list of far greater length full of its under-achievers. Doubtless the same could be said of all names, although in language there is sometimes an inherent and inescapable ring to a word, noun or otherwise. It is tempting to blame Dickens, who managed in one scene to impose rickets on Tiny Tim with such perfect timing that the most pitiable Christmas character in history continues to be absorbed by new generations of children.

"The real puzzle," joked Amis, "is that the Tims do as well as they do, many of them leading reasonably active lives, holding down jobs … going on to have children their own."

The quest to play on with honour through this linguistic handicap is still being admirably lead by Paine, who, for the sake of fairness, should be cheered on until the bitter end.

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