He had been practising saying his name out loud every night before going to sleep so that his ears remained accustomed to hearing his own name

Do you remember that line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? “What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” That’s another way of saying that names are arbitrary tags that we assign and have no effect on reality itself. It’s a nice sentiment yet reality is different. We don’t know for sure if Akhteruzzaman Elias would still have written Khoabnama if he had a different name; what we know is that names have an effect in our everyday life; whether we like it or not.

Michel Platini has withdrawn his candidacy for the Fifa presidency in order to clear his name following his eight-year ban from football.