Snobbery to popular names

All babies should be called Bruce until they can choose their own name at 5.

@Tblock yes Chelsea is a bit chavvy, but nothing beat the twins at my DD's first school called Chardonnay and Merlot I kid you not. Of course the kids didn't care as at 4 they didn't get they were wine types but you can imagine the parents in the playground not helped by the fact the mum herself was only 22 (was only 17 when they were born) so was already being judged, wrongly of course, on her parenting ability. No idea what happened to them because we moved 2 years later.

A friend named her baby Tom. Just Tom.
I thought it was a bit silly, because everyone would assume it was short for Thomas.

Another acquaintance has an Alex, but they regret not calling him Alexander, so that he could have a choice of Alex or Xander.

I'm not snobbish about it, but I would warn any parent off choosing a name that's really common because my mum gave me a very common name. I don't dislike the name in and of itself, but I was one of six in my class, and because I wasn't the most popular one, eventually I literally stopped responding to my name because I turned around so often to find it wasn't me being addressed. Eventually I just picked a random other name to use when I went to uni, and I've been that ever since. I felt completely dissociated from my very common name. My mum has always been upset about this, but it is what it is.

I would say that surely posting on a baby name board is good for unbridled opinions?

It's how to get the unvarnished truth to how people will perceive your child's name (bearing in mind the Mumsnet demographic).

For instance, I think one of my relatives has given her child quite a chavvy name. I would never dream of saying that to her. Nor do I get into RL conversations about my thoughts of the name.

Had she asked me in advance my thoughts, I would have made my feelings known tactfully. Had someone else asked me on an anonymous Internet forum I might have been a bit more forthright (although hopefully mindful that posters may have already named their children the same).

If people can't take the sometimes brutal honesty, perhaps a baby name discussion isn't the place to be.

Also - who the hell cares what any one poster thinks? We're all just random strangers on the internet with nothing better to do than pass judgement on names on baby name websites

There is but my bugbear is people who give their kids surnames/made up names/random objects not used as names/shortenings. Call me a snob but I think kids deserve a proper name for their schooling/cv/work - have a family nickname but don't put that on the birth certificate. How popular that name is is not relevant, you can use a nickname to differentiate if desired. And yes my kids both have traditional Old Testament names, and both use nicknames with friends.

I wouldn’t call anyone silly though for calling their kid chelsea, which is exactly what you did to describe my reasoning for calling my child the name I’m going to give him. I personally wouldn’t call them that, but wouldn’t insult someone who chose that name, which is exactly what you did to me. Totally different, so don’t try to justify it.

I didn’t say anything of the sort. I said the name was silly, in my opinion. Nothing about the parents.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that people who are sufficiently interested in names to be on a baby names board have preferences outside the top ten.

The vast majority of people just pick a name they like and never make it to this board 🤷🏼‍♀️

There's name snobbery, where people see a name as an indicator of socio-economic background, and there's pointing out that a name is overused.

I find names that are new to me take a bit of time to get used to. Names that are overused just become a bit boring.

Alfie was quite cool about 25 years ago, but now it's past it's best. Olivia , Ava and Freya, nice when you only know one but a bit meh now. I never liked Ava much - it's a bit nothingy.

I have a name that was very popular when I was born, to the point that I am always referred to by my full name even when there is no one else with that name in the relevant group. I wanted to avoid that for my child. That’s not snobbery though, and it’s nothing to do with the names themselves. The most popular names are lovely - they are popular for a reason.

Fully intend to call our daughter Emily despite its never ending popularity. Popular names are often classic and lovely.

True, but what name constitutes chavvy though ? I suppose a girls name like Chelsea I might perceive a bit Chavvy, but what other names would you say ? I personally wouldn’t go for a name like this, but I wouldn’t insult someone for choosing a name of that ilk.

But you have just done so. Can’t you see? Why would you not pick Chelsea as a name? Chelsea is not a popular name. It’s unusual. You have made a judgment on the name Chelsea, and called it “a bit chavvy”. You wouldn’t do that if you met a real life Chelsea, just as anyone commenting on names here wouldn’t comment in real life.

Snobbery is about someone thinking they're better. Not wanting a popular name because it's now "common" is snobbery.

Trying to avoid real or perceived issues of a popular name isn't snobbery. It's a difference in priorities.

I didn't really consider popularity. I did want names that had one English pronunciation and used the most common spelling (though one still gets his name misspelt all the time with a spelling I'd never seen before). Guess what kind of name I have?

I also wouldn't give my children names with the same first initial, because my siblings and I all have the same first initial and it was a large pain in the ass. I don't think I'm better than a parent who keeps to a pattern, but on baby name threads where it comes up, yeah, I say it's a pain and wouldn't want it just like I tell stories of my sister - who has a boy's name - being put into boys PE twice after a move and often dealt with being called he when her name was called.

There have been a lot of threads with comments that go on about how tacky, unneeded, and complicating having 2 middle names can be. My children and I all have two middle names. The tacky comments can be snobbish, but I don't think people rightfully saying that it can be an issue your name ends up too long to fit on ID (something I've had, by 1 letter) or how rarely people use middle names in most places and it's unneeded are being snobs. It's not. We all make our own choices in this.

Maybe some of us suggested not to use Ava etc because WE were the kids with the overused name and it sucked being always being “Kathryn Llewellyn” in a class with 5 other Kathryns, 3 Catherines, 4 Katies, 2 Kates, a Kat and a Cait!!! All the time you are looking across longingly at Francesca and Anastasia’s name pegs and thinking “why were my parents so boring?”

As parents we aspire to have a bit more imagination and love in picking our kids names!

Couldn’t agree more. When pregnant with DD I wanted a less popular name, I have a very popular name, in my friendship group of 5, 3 of us have the same name. Picked a name we loved and never heard anyone else with the same name, literally got onto the hospital ward after giving birth, baby in the bed next to us had DD’s name. It’s just luck of the draw with names that your child with mix with other children with the same name.

I think there’s a difference between not wanting there to be four children with the same name in one class and picking a really unique name for the sake of it. There’s definitely a middle ground in there. I would be wary of the top 20 as I personally would like to limit the chances of my child being ‘Sarah M’ for all their school days (obviously I know this can still be the case no matter what name given) but there are plenty of perfectly common names outside of the top 20 that aren’t unusual for the sake of being so.

Quite simply, names are signifiers and help define the ‘herd’ parents and their children belong to. It’s a reality whether people like it or not.

So some people want to be in the herd with unique names, others with traditional proper names, some with celebrity names. Whichever category you are in, your choice of names for your children signals you are similar to others making similar choices and different to other groups. It’s always the way and always will be regardless of whether people feel that’s right or not.

Well, names can date you. And different names date differently. For example, there were loads of girls named Sarah and Emma when I was at school. Although 'overused', these are classic names that are likely to kick around in the background for a while before coming back. Even now Sarah is still within the top 150 names, while other names that were popular in the 1980s (eg Joanne, Gemma, Jason) are a lot further down the list.

Names like Shirley, Linda, Brenda, Gary and Eric are also tied to a very specific era. It's just something to be aware of.

However, I think there's more information out there about baby name lists now. The UK didn't even used to collect data on the top ten names. We also have the internet to give us more info. Parents just used to pick names that sounded nice to them - they would have no real way of knowing whether a name was in the top 10 or top 100. Now parents are a bit more cautious about having a too-popular name.

Also, I think I read somewhere that there's more variety in names now. So whereas 12,000 girls might have been called Sarah in 1980, making it the number 1 name (figure entirely made up), only 6,000 girls might have the number 1 name in 2020.

If you look back to the Tudor period, variety was terrible: three of Henry VIII's wives were called Catherine, two were Anne and one was Jane. Other Tudor names for females were Elizabeth, Margaret and Mary, and that was about it.

Tudor men were almost all Thomas, William, Henry and John.

Personally, I'd be hesitant about choosing a name that came from nowhere and is likely to fall just as quickly. I'd be okay with a name that is very popular but has enough heritage behind it to make it fashionable without being faddy - I would put Sophia and Sophie in this bracket.

Snobbery is directed more at names which are perceived by MN’s predominantly middle class membership as ‘made-up’, ‘chavvy’ or worst of all, both.