I thought I was so original ...

I just can't ever look at or hear the the name Margot without seeing 'Maggot'

I checked out the ONS names list for the UK each year I had a baby.

I only considered names outside the top 1000.

Before you think a name is ‘wacky’ to be outside the top 1000 in popularity, consider that these are all outside the top 1000 for last year:

Barbara
Gemma
Hetty
Carolina
Catrin
Anne
Teresa
Viola
Celia

Carlo
Duncan
Jon
Karl
Quentin
Ricky
Craig
Lucius
Terry

The name Sandy for a girl s outside the top 3,500, and Jeffery for a boy is outside the top 3,000. For example. Not all my style of names, but people assume unpopular equals unknown or wacky, but it’s not always so.

Margot was always a favorite of mine...

Penelope What's her name? Baylis? Harding, perhaps? Lush? Dove?

Dd1 has a name that is not that unusual but not common, when we named her I'd only ever met one other. She is now one of 2 in her class.

Dd2 has a name that I'd never heard of in real life (it's from a tv show). After she was born we discovered there is another one in our town with the same surname!

I don't know anyone with my name, was never at school/university/worked with anyone with it either.
It's not even that outlandish, everyone's heard of it, just no-one chooses it.

The only children I know with my DC's names are other MNers. Not met many in rl- once someone called out in the Science Museum my DD's name, and we met another one

We thought we were being boring and traditional with both our boys and that there would be loads of them. Turns out everyone else went for 'interesting' and at DS1s school he is the only child out of 500 with his name.
So far we have only met one other child with DS2's name but that was a girl using the same shortened version.

Ps:, thanks to @ScottishDiblet for the first laugh of the day

PLAY ED SHEERAN! 😅

Yeah Freya has exploded in popularity. The only teen Freya’s I know are both from N Scotland and one is the daughter of someone who digs up Vikings for a living.

My DC’s names have bounced in popularity all of a sudden. I think I’ve given DD the “Ava” equivalent and DS the “Elliot” equivalent and they’ll be ten a penny by 2022 😬

I always wanted to call my future daughter Freya. Loved the name for ages and ten years ago it was pretty much unheard off. So fast forward ten years and when I finally had my daughter it was a no brainer. Only I didn't know how popular it became. There were at least 3 other Freya's at baby clinic. Saying that we still occasionally get that's an unusual name comments. Also wanted Isla when I was pregnant with my second girl but went with Iris in the end after my absolute favourite Iris Apfel 😊

I went to school - especially once at High School - there were several girls called:

Lisa
Linzi/Lynsey/Lyndsay (and more spellings)
Emma
Michelle
Gilliam/Jillian
Amy/Aimeé
Claire/Clare
Fiona

One of my children's names hasn't soared in numbers but has become very trendy for soap, underwear, etc and is now a VERY popular dogs name too. Not pleased.

My friend has an Ella and a Ruby who are 19 and 18 respectively.

She’s mildly gutted!

My name is fairly uncommon outside Scotland but the Irish spelling has seen a surge in popularity due to a certain Disney film.

My daughter has a fairly common name but haven’t met any her age it’s popularity has dropped loads though friends have used other girls names that were on our list.

Sarahh2014 did you know there's a Sarah club you can join (they include Saras as well)? They have parties and everything to celebrate the unique joy that it is being a Sara/h.

I've managed to call all of my dc spectacularly unpopular names somehow. Only just scraping into the top 100. Although I guess that means they are still quite popular.

I think they are nice names, but I've doomed them to never know the joy of a personalised pencil from the name shops that specialise in name tat. It's not all bad having a popular name.

17 years ago we decided to call our DS Logan.

No one had heard of it. No one but us liked it.

Now there's loads of 5/6 year olds with the name.

A teacher who wailed to me that she had chosen Evie because she didn't know a single one
You all know what happened.

My name is fairly unusual and sited on here as a 70s name! My aunt had a Joseph in 1981 and everyone said how odd and old-fashioned it was. Now there are loads!

That should have said Alexa story (autocorrect!)

Crying laughing at the Alexande story - sorry!

I had a fairly u usual name met 4 others from birth until 24 then bang name went into the top 50 for 2 years now there are loads of 6/7 year olds walking around using MY name 😂😂. My sister had an unusual name then in the top 20 the following year mum was fuming

I tried to give my ds1&2 not common names so far I know 3 ds1's and 2 ds2's.

*reception - though a deception class does sound more fun!

When I was in my 20s I had Amelia picked out as it was my grandmother's name.

I was gutted when it suddenly became popular.

Fifteen years later and I had DS - only 16 others with same name in England and Wales in 2013 when he was born and it hasn't climbed higher. It's a proper name, biblical in fact, but unusual. Still love it and how we have never met or heard of another.

DS deception class has several similar unusual names though, so they are all united in their 'uniqueness' iyswim. Except for the Olivers and all the Elliots!

When I was born, Abbie was unusual and a lot of people told my mum it was old fashioned. That was 40 years ago but now there are Abbie's everywhere.