Everybody knows that babies' names come in adorable flocks. Since most people have names, the question of why they have the names when they have those names suggests a market for deeper consideration. Sharon is in, then Sharon is out; Ben is out, then Ben is in-you understand the drill. Some years ago, near the end of the Summer of Love, an epidemic of Amandas swept through young mothers. Amanda was the sexy heroine of Tom Robbins' novel Another Roadside Attraction , a best-selling paperback in college bookstores across the land. My daughter's preschool was lousy with Amandas.

I bear the name Herbert (alas; more to follow). As time goes by and I live long enough, I am among the brave, diminishing few. When I hear of another Herbert, I'm confident that he was born before 1932. Accompanying the Depression over which Herbert Hoover presided was another Prohibition-forbidden to name your son after the inept, tomato-cheeked engineer in the White House. Few Adolfs and Benitos were born in Germany and Italy after 1945.

The name Herbert still occurs now and then in the African-American community, as in Herbert Muhammad and Herbert X, perhaps for the sake of retro irony, representing devil-may-care insouciance, elegance, rebelliousness, mischievousness, a je ne sais quoi swagger in wraparound sunglasses. Doesn't seem to work that way for me. Not that this Herbert-myself, personally-goes in for computer dating or personals advertisements, but I suspect an all-out Dirk or even a middle-of-the-road Bruce would get better responses from all the lovely Amandas out there.

The abbreviation, Herb, survives in television and low-budget movies as a jokey label, pasted on the square and stolid guy who loses the girl. "Herbie" is a quick laugh, somebody to be squashed without remorse, or given to squashing himself. That's a cheap shot, purveyors. Please feed your laugh tracks elsewhere.

Occasionally, inconsiderate folks-such as highway patrol persons-choose to pronounce my name with the trained sarcasm they learn in I'm-in-control-around-here school, as in the phrase, "Where's the fire, Herbert?" In answer, I like to explain the origins of my name: It comes from the classical Teutonic, meaning "flower of the army," dude. (The ticket can cost upward of $200, plus an educational stint in driving school.)

Now it's time for a confession, not an alibi. The reason for my name is that, in the Jewish tradition, children are to honor the dear departed by carrying on their names. My grandmother, Hilda, died while my mother was carrying. It wasn't in the cards for me to be named Hilda; my parents were thoughtful in that way. But at least they could pay tribute to my grandmother by giving me the initial H. Thank you again, Mom, for hardening my spirit by giving me something to struggle against. Asleep, I might consider myself a football star and a great lover, but in the cold light of morning I was limited to boring Nobel Prize aspirations.

Some years ago, when I published an autobiographical novel, Fathers , I heard not only from other men with my last name but also from several with the same first name. It's a great nation we have here, full of astonishments. I decided to spend some of my unexpected windfall from the book by subsidizing a Herbert Gold Convention, all of us meeting at a convenient venue, such as the restaurant on my corner, but a wiser head prevailed. My wife, Melissa-nearly a unique name at that time, now no longer-felt there were better things to do with the money. We had three children before divorcing.

So I never met the other Herbert Golds, although once a packet of Haitian paintings, directed to me care of a friend in San Francisco, were delivered to an H. Gold who was some sort of fruit and vegetable scientist in Berkeley, and I was delivered a barrel of experimental Central American bananas. By the time I returned from Haiti, my woman friend was upset about carrying around in her open convertible a cargo of bananas so ripe that they were quarreling among themselves. The two Herbert Golds made the exchange of shipments with no additional harm-except to my relationship with the young woman, who had responded to the summons from Pan Am. It took a few years before Pan Am's karma led to bankruptcy for the airline.

Now most of the Herberts are gone. Do you know any but me? I thought not.

But the time of the Herberts will come again. Jason and Nicholas will wear out their welcomes; Deborah and Sharon have already done so. Sufficiently sanitized by our American skill at burying history, the long-awaited re-

release of Herbert! The Family Classic will delight audiences nationwide. Perhaps I'll only hear of the revival when my heirs are about to yank my feeding tube.

But someday, somehow, as surely as the earth turns around the sun (except in Utah), President Hoover will be forgiven or, at least, sufficiently forgotten that Herbert can rise out of mire, like the Phoenix and Enron. Herbert will be the name of a killer tango dancer or Wimbledon ace.

We can pray that soon Dirk and Mick will be discarded on the dust heap of history, while Herberts will take their rightful places as generators of pitty-pats in the hearts of lonely dreamers everywhere. A blind date arranged via hotsex.com with a lad called Herb will set the lovely Amanda's heart aflutter as she boots up and taps in, "Dinner at, like, my place?"

In the meantime, to the other Herberts still out there, I offer fraternal compassion. I feel your pain, especially since it's also mine. But this, too-including "Herbie"-will pass. We were brought into the world with love and optimism just before a time of turmoil and apples sold on street corners, and there must have been a reason. In the crucible of Herb, we'll tough it out.

Hilda, according to family legend, was an easygoing woman. I inherited little but her H.

Herbert Gold's books, Haiti, Best Nightmare on Earth, The Age of Happy Problems and The Magic Will, have recently been reissued by Transaction Publishers with new material.

A few snotty souls seem fated by a contrary trait to hold their noses upon encountering prose of overripe odor. Alas, I am one of this number.

Some years ago, in my hometown of Cleveland-the Paris of northeastern Ohio-I detected early spores of the food-inflation fungus blowing across Lake Erie. One restaurateur struggled to rise to the demands of the region's fine-dining pioneers. He revised his menu to feature something called "cuisinely cooking" which, in keeping with the tastes of the region, paid homage to fresh-frozen vegetables, which were plucked in the morning from his ice chest, except when Libby's canned peas and succotash were in season.

So it's time for a confession. In my secret heart, I yearn for food critics who can rise to the level of a wise child, one with sensitive taste buds, who says: I ate the cheeseburger and it was good. (George Orwell might smile, if he ever did.) Lacking skilled labor in the pages of newspapers that are bloated with food-related advertising-and, therefore, bloated with food-related news and opinion (indeed, we live in a time afflicted with gas-fired prose)-our hungry nation needs antidotes against the food-inflation fungus.

How about strong medicine? I suggest a paperback edition of Orwell's classic account of his experiences in the restaurants of two of Europe's fine cities, Dining Out in Paris and London . As things currently stand, the rhetoric of food criticism is truly down and out.

Food can provide joy, companionship, the sealing of friendship and love, interesting sensations of taste, even the miraculous sighting of celebrities-they also eat. These are all rewarding aspects of our duty to metabolize or suffer the consequences. Dining, snacking, sneaking to the pot and dipping in a spoon or a couple of fingers provide tender moments during our time here below on earth. A crusade against appreciation, relish, even deep analysis is not appropriate. But surely dear, departed M.F.K. Fisher, bib strung about her throat at the great chef's table in the sky, would lose her good humor if she could hear the rattle, drone and squeals of the horde of deep-fried food aficionados spattering the air.

A disciplined corps of Wretched Excess Police needs to be appointed to punish violators of hyperbole regulations by forcing them to watch videos of Martha Stewart making her breakfast. For the food-inflation fungus leads to cliché and metaphor blight in the spreading clot of culinary journalism. At the risk of spoiling the dinner of a certain fellow writer striving for distinction, I'll use this "rising star" as an example. I take all the following quotations from a single article, published not long ago in an important and respected newspaper of national circulation, in which the writer was describing the delights of San Francisco restaurants.

In the first paragraph, she washed down a frisée aux lardons with a "moody Gigondas." Immediately, a state of alert resounded in my garret. Heathcliff was moody; Marilyn Monroe is said to have suffered; but who is Gigondas and why was he or she pouting? Then the writer reports that the frisée aux lardons at a different restaurant was "smartened with a fan of smoked duck breast resting under the frisée."

Personally, I take gingko biloba in the hope of improving my I.Q., but if I can be smartened by application of a smoked duck breast, I'll aspire to higher achievement. It should be no trouble, even for a person without aptitude for animal training, to persuade a smoked duck breast to take a rest, perhaps even a good long siesta, under a frisée.

Inevitably, the writer proceeds to a discussion of San Francisco "foodies." This baby talk for people who enjoy a good meal is so ubiquitous that perhaps it must be tolerated-I'm trying to be nice-and then we can allow folks who treasure their pet companions to be called "doggies," "catties" and "birdies."

The writer eats briskly along to a restaurant described as a "sensualist's paradise … the humming of the hood fan … the clatter of plates … the winding grind of a coffee machine." Whoa there! I know about paradise, at least from rumor (lovely dancers at my service, the smile of angels with folded wings, perhaps the deity of one's choice overseeing eternal life). But "the scent of lamb daube under my nose" does not qualify as one of those conditions of paradise. I hope to become a sensualist someday, if I work hard at it, but surely a writing sensualist's paradise should include prose that does not cause acid reflux.

The meal begins with a "statement." By "statement," the writer means butternut-squash soup and a potato, artichoke and asparagus salad. That sounds pretty tasty. But what does it state? She states that the salad was "freckled with mustard seeds." Freckles are cute, but what do they help to declare? Explain the statement, please.

Later, she fidgets with the "heresy" of serving out-of-season asparagus-the charge of heresy is worse than blasphemy-but then swiftly modifies a hasty judgment: "The asparagus, admittedly, was superb." That is a relief. This tolerant critic will forgive heretical out-of-season asparagus if it manages to be superb. She also respects courage. A chef "bravely serves a chicken fricassee with garlic and green beans." Most of us respect bravery-the fireman who carries the baby out of the burning building, the soldier who crawls under fire to rescue a wounded comrade. But I see no medals in the offing for brave variations on chicken fricassee.

She reports that new bistros have been opened "with a soulful purpose: survival." Here is an example of language inflation at its finest. Survival is a universal ambition for commercial enterprise. We can respect the hope of excellence, the filling of bellies with enjoyable cooking. But where's the soulfulness here, buddy?

Probably I should allow this writer to take her rest-perhaps under a nearby frisée-but honesty requires the registration of her praise for "the visual theater of cooks' heads waving with activity." Apparently, these are cooks with hinges in their heads. In addition, the sentences "the topping exploded with flavor …. A guinea hen terrine was similarly amplified" suggest a fireworks display, along with speakers and volume controls to make sure that everyone can hear the guinea hen terrine sing its arias.

Now go in peace, Amanda Hesser of The New York Times , and may all your out-of-season vegetables miraculously overcome their heresies. You're more entranced by restaurants than I am, and surely a better cook, a better dinner guest, and more discriminating all the way down the line.

Herbert Gold writes novels and eats in San Francisco.