IN reply to Michael Blakemore (Letters, August 30), it is in fact possible to be "born an orphan", because the word means that the person has been deprived, by death, of either one parent, or both.

In this case, Rhodes Brown's father had died before his son was born, rendering Rhodes Brown both an orphan and a "posthumous child", an expression which, in the Oxford English Dictionary, is dated to 1619, but which may go back to the Wars Of The Roses, when there were a lot of posthumous children around.

Earlier still, the Roman name Postumus, "last-born", was given to a child who had been born "patre mortuo", and hence was the father's last child.

Ziggy Layram,

Trafalgar Street,

South Bank, York.

Updated: 11:29 Monday, September 05, 2005