evidence: Tuesday is the 164th anniversary of the birth of the Irish playwright, poet and bon vivant, writes Stephen Costello 'What's in a name?" Shakespeare asked in Romeo and Juliet. A name like Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde? His mother Lady Jane, who nearly got incarcerated herself for defamatory prose, was a poet and passionate republican, while Wilde's father, Sir William, was a leading eye surgeon and philanderer. The name of Wilde dominated the salons, drawing-rooms, and theatres of fin de siecle Victorian England before it became a byword for something altogether less salubrious. [...] Wilde was a wit who happened also to be wise. He rivals the greatest humorists for his barbed but brilliant one-liners such as this one: "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." Once when stopped on the street, a gentleman said to Wilde: "Mr Wilde I know you from London", to which Wilde retorted, "Well perhaps in London I'll know you again". In his play The Importance of Being Earnest he gives this line to Lady Bracknell who thinks that a certain Lady Harbury whose wealthy husband had just died is living entirely for pleasure: "I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief."