Regretted an unusual name?

Phyllis, what about going by Phy?

Thanks, how would that be pronounced?

Dd1 is 13 and has an extremely unusual name, fewer than 3 in her birth year. DH has since met one lady with the same name but about 5 years older. We love it, and so does she. Dd2 has an unusual name that has since got more common, and Ds is top 100 i think.

crabbo if it's Leilani then I bloody love it!
Also a fan of Meilani

Phyllis, what about going by Phy?

Plenty of unusual names are not bully material

But people with common names change their names too so I really don't think it's always one way or the other. It just really depends on the name, their personality and the things that can happen in their lives to affect how they feel about it.

Was it on one of these name threads someone commented the next generation are going to call their kids Barry's & Sharon's

In their infinite wisdom, my parents decided to make me a Phyllis. It was in memory of a dear, male relative (Philip) but as I am relatively young I have found it to be somewhat of a burden and a turn off on the dating websites as lots of men assume I'm lying about my age.

My name is unusual (not made-up). If you type it into the names.darkgreener search bar it doesn't pop up at all... (so less than 3 babies a year, I think?). It doesn't look made up in my opinion and it clearly sounds like a name (not sure if this makes sense). I've only ever gotten compliments for it ;)

I really like my name :)

I've known two people who were very happy with their unusual names. One was called Sally and she said she'd rarely met another. The other had an Old Testament name so unusual I'm not going to say what it is, she's probably the only one in the U.K. When I asked her about it she said 'my father gave me that name, it's from the bible'. She loved her name and the fact her dad had chosen It for her made it very special to her.

Both my husband and mother were given 'unusual' and 'uncommon' names. My husband started calling himself by his lovely middle name when he was 10. As an adult virtually noone knows it's not his actual name(real name got a small wave of giggling at our wedding).
My mother didn't have such a nice middle name, but it is less 'flamboyant' than her first name. She has also used her middle name since late childhood.
They are a small sample, but both would have preferred a 'normal' name(both of there's were borderline made up though).
As an aside, to the person who said that having an unusual name makes someone interesting/gives them character, i have never experienced someone being intrinsicly more interesting due to their name.

Over time, a name gets attached to a person. Of course unusual names, in isolation, are not universally loved, almost by definition.

We name our children so they can be identified. An unusual name does a much better job at identifying, and the person can make the name 'their own'.

I have always loved having an unusual (not common/overused) name.

One of our dc has an uncommon name. I still really love it, but the response when we announced the name was underwhelming and made me doubt myself for a while.

Actually, DD has changed her name, but to give herself an additional middle name which is a real name, traditional in my family, but which is also so rare as not to show up in the ONS list.

Flicking through to check, I discovered that in 2015 Khaleesi was more common than Elisabeth or Elinor, and that only 5 baby girls in the whole country were called Clare that year.

My parents gave me a name which wasn't popular at all in the year I was born, with an unusual (although not made up!) spelling to boot. They gave my brother a not popular name too.... within two years of us both being born those names shot into the top 5, and stayed in the top 10 for the past 20 years or so.

I HATE that my name is spelled differently to the common variant of my name. And I hate even more that if It happens within earshot of my mother she will loudly and angrily correct it, even though I'm now in my mid-30s!! (We don't go to starbucks together, that's for sure!) I wish I'd just deed polled to the common spelling when I was 18.

I mean "have" not "had". I still have my unusual name!

Original I only mentioned that because the OP told me earlier that if DC don't like their name when they're older they can "totally change them! No big deal."

I forgot to add that I had a very pretty, but unusual name as a child myself. It's actually quite common now, but unheard of when I was younger (but common in Aussie or American soap operas funnily enough). It was not great as a child, but do love it now and would hate a boring name. I'm quite a boring person, so an unusual name adds a bit of interest!

I think these days there are so many unusual names out there that it's not such a big deal. When I was younger it was very much biblical names for boys and most girls in school had three or four others with the same name in their year. I like the diversity of names out there now.

I've never considered changing mine. What a faff!
And what to choose? I'd happily drop the middle one though - shocking! Even DS was when he first heard it.

DD is 10 and has a name which, while a real name, is unusual enough not to show up on the ONS lists, so fewer than 3 per year in the UK. She likes it, and it can be shortened to a more frequently encountered diminutive.

"Reading this thread it would appear that almost every parent is happy with their unusual choice, but not all the kids are."

That's what I was trying to say earlier. It's the child that has to live with the name for the rest of their lives. Or change it. And changing it is surely the biggest indication possible that they regret their parents' choice

My son has an unusual name. Was really worried at first (dp was insistent we called him this), but now we hear other kids with his name a lot. Once on TV, twice around locally, so it's not unusual at all. I think it suits him, although people assume his name is another name that sounds similar and he gets called that a lot instead.

The automated voice calling patients at the Drs says his name phonetically, which sounds terrible and nothing like his name. But other than that, no issues, and actually, a few compliments about his name.

DS has a "proper" but uncommon name, and we've no regrets so far! We get "oh that's a lovely name" a lot which I love

One if my (other) sisters used to get compliments.

They weren't really - 'oh that's so....unusual' 'what? Is that a name?' 'is that one word or two?' and our and the family favourite (very loud horsey woman) 'x?? Your name is x? Long pause. Well that's a bloody stupid name isn't it??'

Please remember - most people are too polite to say what they really think to your face. Only one of my sister had an ordinary name.

Big regrets, yes. We gave our dd1 an unusual name. It was fine when she was little but she is almost 12 now and she just wants to 'fit in' She has renamed herself Emily. Officially she still has the normal but unusual name that is on her birth certificate but when you get the 'known as' section on the school form we have to put Emily.

I am disappointed but do you know what? I wish I had given it more thought. Chosen a name that could not be a target for bullies and that would see a baby into adulthood. Named her for her own sake and not to have just tried to be different/unique. Dc2 & Dc3 are Henry and Olivia, for this reason