Does it matter if it’s popular?

Just checked and Gary is rising in popularity again, being given to 26 babies last year!

I read an article a while back suggesting that the name Gary was in danger of dying out.

It’s both currently very uncommon for babies and a well known, easy to spell name

Why do people imply that the only alternative to a popular name is an obscure hard to pronounce and spell name?!

As someone with an unusual name myself one of my key priorities when naming my child was ensuring they'd never have to either spell it aloud or argue with people about how it's pronounced! I used to long to be one of the multiple Sarahs every time a cover teacher read out the register and the whole class laughed when they mispronounced my name, I so wanted a keyring/teddy bear/other piece of tat with my name on but could never have one, and I still as an adult find it quite exciting when I meet someone else with my name. So we went pretty popular for DS (he's Edward, which was no. 23 last year, but since we call him Ted I suspect that actually makes his name more popular since there are also a lot of Theodores called Ted), and I feel just fine about him not being the only one with his name in his year at school!

I’m also expecting again..we can’t decide on names but top 100 etc I don’t think will influence us too much. You like what you like I think!

I went through nursery and primary school without another the same, got to academy and there were 8 in my class and a further 2 in the year. Didn’t bother me in the slightest. You generally know if a teacher is speaking to you or not. There are 3 of us named the same in my office at work, age difference of 7yrs younger with one and 13years with another, obviously our mums just liked our names :). My sons name has a slightly different spelling (hubby chose) and although only 3 with the same name in his whole school (400 pupils) theres one in his class and he has the same spelling 😂

We vetoed anything top 10 - just because I felt like I wouldn't want my child to be like one of the 8 Katies in my year at school! I remember that Ruby and Olivia were two we ruled out for that reason. But it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, let's face it. If you like it, go for it.

DH predicted DDs name would enter the top 100 soon and, lo and behold, it crept in at 99 the next year and has been creeping up since.

Totally agree re Sophia. It's my dd's middle name and I actually worried it was a bit too random and if people would wonder why I was picking an Italian name. I had a whole justification worked out about how it predated the French version in the UK.

The only Sophia I ever met before having DD1 pronounced it the old-fashioned English way, sounds like So Fire. My only (unjustified) worry about choosing the name was that people would pronounce it like this! Like how my grandmother would always refer to "Mariah Callas", as if a Greek would ever pronounce Maria as Mariah. The "So Fire" in question is my age, half Dutch, and v.v. posh, so I didn't let her name pronunciation put me off!

I couldn't care less. I'm a Sarah, of which there were approx 900 others in my class at school in the 90's/early 00's. And I just accepted it. I didn't even notice it to be honest. We have had an Oliver, born in 2017. Not because it's a popular name but because my DH and I love the name and chose it together years ago when we first started taking about children. I completely accept he will go to school with also 900 Oliver's but that's ok. Because to me, he's the most special and the only one (can you tell I've had a glass of wine... or 2 😂). People should feel able to name their children whatever they like without comment.

I do think that we are products of our environment though. In trying to avoid the top ten we stand a fair chance of picking the same name as those in our immediate demographic. Hence me bumping into so many people with the same name as me and people being annoyed to discover there are two Dulcies in the class.

Isla I knew because of Scottish connections but in my mind it was still reasonably unusual when dd1 was born in 2011 and in reality that's not the case

Totally agree re Sophia. It's my dd's middle name and I actually worried it was a bit too random and if people would wonder why I was picking an Italian name. I had a whole justification worked out about how it predated the French version in the UK. Then it turned out to be a top ten name! And her first name, which I worried about being too popular as it's a classic, is actually much rarer among her age group. By the time dd2 was born I was much more au fair with what is popular but I think names like Olivia and Amelia are on the wane here - I don't know any younger than about 8.

I've seen it in here many times with people choosing names like Isla and Sophia thinking they're unusual and not realising that they are in the top 10.

You're right. Maybe they chose the names a long way ahead of time and when their DD was finally born, it didn't occur to them to check the name's recent popularity. I chose the name Sophia when I was a little girl myself in the mid 80s, and there really weren't any around that I knew of. When DS was born in 2001 I didn't notice any little Sophias. Four years later I had DD1 and when I told the midwife her name she said "That's nice - my daughter is Sophia, too!" A few months later DD was hospitalised with bronchialitis and I noticed two other baby Sophias on the ward. When she was discharged I took the kids to see Santa and the lady in front of me had a Sophia at her side - you get the picture! I felt a bit silly for not realising that my long-cherished name was suddenly everywhere - if I'd known I would probably have relegated it to a middle name.

I'm not sure why Sophia suddenly became so popular. It might have been as alternative to Sophie, and because of the popularity of names ending in A. Isla is easier to understand: I remember watching Home and Away as a teenager and noticing Isla Fisher in the credits. I thought it was pretty but assumed it wasn't a 'proper name' but rather a misspelled place name, like Sienna. To be fair, Sophia wasn't a given name during the classical period either, but by the time I knew that I was already in love with it!

That goes the same for "classic timeless" names as well though. My name was number 100 in my year of birth but I work with loads and there are loads in a group I belong to. Dd1's name is pretty similar. I think it was around number 50 in her year of birth but across the population as a whole I reckon it'd rank quite high. Dh's too.

Meeting another person with my name doesn't bother me overall - although I do have a unisex name and I find meeting a male "me" a bit weird. But I do dislike working with another person with my name in close proximity, it just irritates me and leads to mix ups. Never anything major but I would personally prefer not to

Doesn’t bother me at all! I like it

"He'll be one of three in his class and they'll have to be Oliver C and Oliver K and Oliver M" is the most common objection that I see.

Meeting other people with your name when you're an adult - does that bother anyone?

True

I think it’s still true that similar names (e.g from Greek mythology) are seen as try hard and pretentious

While names like Aphrodite or Apollo would probably look try hard / pretentious, there are some names from Greek mythology that are pretty mainstream and unremarkable.

E.g. Phoebe, Jason, Iris, Maia, Helen, Cassandra

Yeah, but, so what?
Oliver doesn't have any culturally negative connotations. It's classless, so he'll meet some posh Olivers, some average and some not very posh. People know how to spell it, and you can't easily guess what Oliver's background will be like, e.g. parents jobs. If you saw an Oliver Smith on a job application, you wouldn't be able to infer much, apart from they are likely to be British. If a famous person called Oliver does something negative, so what there are loads of Olivers.

The same things do not apply to little Candida/Blaiden-Jae/Acorn

But Oliver won't only meet Oliver's born in the same year as him, but all those 6000 born each year for the past 10 years or so.

The top boys' name (more popular than the top girls' name) was used for 6,259 boys in 2017, out of 348,071 boys registered. So 1 in 55 boys was given that name (Oliver).

If your child is in a class of 30.
The class is made of 15 boys and 15 girls.
Your child is a boy, with the most popular boys' name.
There are 14 other boys.
So there's a 14/55 chance that one (or more) of the other boys will be called Oliver.
That goes down to 1 in 4.

So if you call your son the MOST popular name for the year, 3/4 of the time there won't be another boy with the same name in his class.

(this all assumes that names are distributed evenly around the country, which they aren't, but never mind)

(I'm a bit tired so I hope I did the right maths but I think it's a simple one)

Last year's England + Wales data
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/babynamesenglandandwales/2017

And weird spellings belong in the unusual/weird category! Not in the normal but not popular one.

There's a big difference between unusual (as in weird) and unpopular(as in normal name that isn't fashionable right now)!

I'd much rather have an unpopular name (normal name outside top 100 or 500) than either a super fashionable nor a strange unusual name.

In other words, the opposite of popular is not unusual/weird but just not trendy!