Need a baby boy name that's unique

How about Jolyon?

Alaric
Anselm
Alured
Ailred
Jessamy
Roderick
Cuthbert
Lancelot
Percival
Gawain
Julius
Apollo
Ferdinand
Zebedee
Algernon
Aloysius

Sorry if I phrased it poorly, I used the word 'probably' in that sentence because I hadn't looked the ranking up for those names . Isaac was a poor guess and is indeed more popular than I would have anticipated.

I think part of my point is that it can be really counter intuitive which names for used more often than others more.

yeah, I'm certainly happy to be corrected, the ons would be the source to use www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/babynamesenglandandwalesbabynamesstatisticsboys

My list was a quick and dirty google search on each name and then reading the summary from the various websites in the results - some websites had been updated more recently than others but I was looking more at a general flavour of popularity. So it's more than possible I accidently had one or two American results accidently included, or some that were 2020 and some that were 2019 2018 or such.

Lucien was from here - www.ukbabynames.com/boys/lucian
I love the name but it does seem to have been growing in popularity.

One boy who is James but parents call him Jimmy.

@AliceMcK James or Jimmy?
I know a few James, and Jamie's but I've only ever come across one Jimmy under the age of about 55.

@howdoesatoastermaketoast where are you using for your statistics?

ONS has Lucien outside the top 1000 for baby boys in England and Wales 2020.

Isaac is only just outside the top 20 at 21 with 2074 baby Isaacs - that would seem like it wouldn’t guarantee being the only one in the school.

This is where you need to make sure you look up the correct pronunciation of a name. It’s going to be hard enough on a child to be given a “unique” name without them not knowing how to actually pronounce it correctly.

All my children have very uncommon names, but they are at least names people know and for the most part know how to pronounce. If people don’t get it right my DCs at least know the correct pronunciation and origin of their name E.g my name is pronounced x y & z, it’s Irish, don’t worry just call my x for short…

I know several primary aged James/Jimmys

A 4yo Dylan
A 10 Bert
A 8yo Alan and 2 Primary aged Roberts.

i think some of these names are coming back

Zebbediah was on my hormone driven list

When comparing names like Allan or Isaac I think you have to take into account Alan and Izaak etc, mostly our names are spoken not written. Being Izaak with a Z or Allan with two l's isn't OPs aim

So all of these names are being given to fewer baby boys than the name Lucien is
Maurice is #829
Fletcher is #880
Maximillian #891
Edmund is #1572 which I rather like (yes I have been watching Ripper street)
Greame is #6720
Ned #8573

Gervaise probably has a decent shout out at being unique as a first name - it's an old French / Norman surname that came over in 1066.

"The U.S. Social Security Administration (ssa.gov) public data has no record of the name Gervaise. Imagine that, your name is not present in the 6,028,151 public data. One possible reason is that there are fewer than five occurrences of your name."

Jonty
caspian
brekkan

Invictus
Jove
Jupiter
Clint
Zebediah

for comparison Lucien is #429

yeah I think the question is how unique does OP want? - for him to be the only one in his class of 30 is certainly pretty reasonable, and not too hard to do stay out of the top 10 and you should be fine. Only one in his year group stay out of the top 100. Only one in his school probably stay out of the top 1000.

Slightly quirky fact is that there are many recognisable and easy to spell names that would still likely qualify as probably still rare enough to be the only one in their school like Colin Adrian Dougal and Isaac.

If you're aiming for "I've never seen that before" I'd recommend easy to guess pronunciation.

Possible suggests and examples of familiar / easy to read but still kind of unique:
Adam (#60) Adrian (#65) or Robert (#80) - likely the only one in his class, I think the OP is committed to the idea of something a little more unusual than this.

Jeremy (#231), Simon (#281), Martin (#301) Abraham (#319) Phillip (#606) Amos (#781) Alfred (#891) Devon (#884) or Dane (#927) he's likely the only one in his Primary school, and the only one in his school year once he hits Secondary, might well be the only one in his Secondary school.

Cedric (#1038) Allan (#1177) Elton (#1568) Harold (#1727), Caine (#1901) Barry (#1907) Roderick (#2168) Bradford (#2571) Alastair (#2602) and one of my favourites Eamon (#3169) Likely to be the only boy called this in his Secondary school.

Brennan (#1261) Bran (#6505) Cormac (#6635) Cavan (#6641) Archibald (#6691) Barack (#6699)Claude (#6712) Aiken (#9120) Selwyn (#11345) Colm (#12875) or Morton (#13688) Pretty likely to be the only one called this a person (even teachers) has ever met, well read people might recognise from fiction or history.

Loosy-en would probably be a unique spelling.

They searching Old English or Anglo Saxon names for something unusual.

We know one Alaric. Anselm is classy.

Clovis
Ignatius

I very seriously considered Isambard.
DH did not!

If a bloke said to me "Hi, I'm Cyprian" I'd think he came from Cyprus...

Ulysses was on my list (we went for Thomas in the end 🤣🤣)
I also like Cyprian

Some gorgeous suggestions here 🥰

@AWobABobBob - only about 3 or 4 of the listed names are not British.

The rest are either obscure older British names or come from cultures or literature from which the British have freely adopted names for centuries, Greek mythology for instance.

Oh yes sorry I've been on Dark Greener and it isn't there so assuming it's under 3

A few ways to look at the date for England and Wales. And a note that (unlike Scotland) England and Wales only release the names given to three or more babies in a given year. So there could have been two babies given each of the names on my list in 2020, but there’s no way to tell that.

ONS data sets for girls names - one file each year going back to 1996
ONS data set for boys names - one file each year going back to 1996
These are great for more granular data. They give a separate too hundred for England and Wales, popular names by location, maternal age.

Dark Greener website. This is my favourite way to view name popularity. It takes the ONS data and plots it on a graph so it’s easy to see how the name trends have changed year by year - great for catching rising trends, and far easier for a quick check than loading up the spreadsheet!