If you named your baby an unusual name

Mine both - DD and DS, have unusual names and have always liked them. They are 'proper' names and not made up silly non-names. Just unusual, especially in England (my ExH is Canadian).
They liked not knowing anyone else with the same names, plus I think they thought it was rather cool. However, as adults they have each met someone else with the same name though.
I've only met one person too with the same name as me - I noticed her on a mutual FB friend's posts and we have since chatted about it.

DS has an unusual name for where we live. We all love it - he's only had a small amount of hassle at school about it.

We wanted to call DD a very unusual name (geographical relevance). Once we thought about it seriously, we realised it would be shortened to some thing we didn't like. So we gave it as a middle name.

Yes, I have an unusual name with unusual spelling. My name is Tamson, yes that is how it’s spelt. I actually really like my name, my dad gave it to me and it meant something to him. I have spent my life correcting people spelling it. Oddly everyone seems determined to tell me I have spelt my name wrong.
DC is 22 and has a strong biblical name that no one ever spells wrong but although everyone has heard of this biblical person no one in the UK ever uses it (it’s not Jesus!). He loves it, no one forgets it and he never has to spell it out.

My kids both have relatively uncommon names - one is a family name but I’ve never met another, the other is a name from my husband’s country which is common there but unusual here. They haven’t had any issues so far, but their school has kids from a variety of backgrounds so most kids have ‘unique’ names.

I'm in my 50s and my name was always unusual growing up. It was my grandmother's name but I never knew anyone else with the same name. Then a few years ago a character in a popular tv drama had the same name. It's now quite popular!

One of my kids has an unusual name (in the 3000s rather than the top 200 like the others). She has more nicknames than any of my other kids, but the only big issue she has had is something no one can control - Disney used it which was at first really exciting for her and then her classmates ruined it.

That sparked a pretty normal teen 'I'm considering using another name' phase, but she only looked at names that are even more unusual for where we are so it wasn't that it's unusual but that she was fed up of her classmates remarks/singing at her. That has now passed as they got bored with it and now she's back to being fine with it, though sometimes gets irked by people misspelling and mishearing it, but both she and my other daughter with a very well known name get this.

DH has an old fashioned Irish name. He has to spell it every time.
I share his Irish surname - we have to spell that too, every time.
It's very wearing.

One if our kids had a traditional name that gained notoriety - think like Myra, for example - and got the bad rep after we had chosen it.

They ditched the name as an adult.

Both my kids have relatively unusual Scottish names. Ds has never said anything about his name tbh (he's 16) but Dd (12) has said before she wishes she was called Amy but that might just be a name she likes rather than a reaction to the unusualnsss of her name iyswim.

Fwiw I had a VERY popular name - at school there were LOADS of us and I despised it.

I always find it funny when parents declare they obviously made the perfect name choice ‘because it suits them’. By the time you’ve said and written your child’s name thousands of times of course it suits them - it IS them.

My kids’ names would be declared boring by many on MN but they’re less common where we live and they tick our boxes of being a classic name with the traditional spelling.

DH has an unusual name. I think there are three in the UK and two are him and his dad!
It's a family name passed down five generations which ceased with the birth of our DS and DH absolutely hates it. He's known always by his middle name, so his name stated in full whilst proclaiming our wedding vows was an eye opener for many, cue many side glances and raised eyebrows.

I'll add, this may be the reason I picked common and traditional names for my two boys 😅

Name changed for this.

My name is Fern. Born and raised in Scotland. To this day, I've never personally met another Fern (I know they're out there lol). I hated it as a kid as things never had my name on them and it was so unusual, all the teachers would remember my name immediately so I was never able to just be amongst the class in school (might sound weird but it really was like this every year that the teacher would be learning names but mine was always learned first). Everyone told me how unusual and lovely my name was growing up but it didn't make a difference. As a teenager, I got used to it and it didn't bother me anymore.

As an adult, I quite like it now. But I live abroad and the amount of times I have to repeat my name and pronounce it the English / American way is a bit annoying as no one here can pronounce it the way my Scottish family and friends do.

There's different kinds of unusual though - to consider recent threads on here I can think of three main types:

Something like Heather that is well known but just isn't popular at the moment.

Names from other cultures that aren't familiar to many in the UK but have a long history of use elsewhere.

Names like Lukkey-Grrl, that, well. Y'know.

They'll all have different experiences. No one will bat an eyelid at Heather and it'll come up the charts again at some point in her life. The name from another culture will get plenty of both curiosity and bigotry. And Lukkey-Grrl, well, we wish her well.

DD has gone through phases re a very unusual name (for this country). She has to spell it for people but so do I with a non-British surname. We also get a range of pronunciations because my accent is different from the one where I live. However, I’d still make the same choice.

A friend at uni hated her unusual name (chosen by her father) so just called herself something else.

The first we found out about her bonkers first name was when we phoned her at home in the holidays and her father said that nobody of that name lived there. She had been using her chosen name since starting secondary school and her father was an arse.

I'd be over the moon! Short and to the point, nice meaning if you like wolves. But I do like a name with a clear meaning (and not a fan at all of 'alternative' spellings. A name is the name it is, however you spell it, iyswim)

I do, however, we agree with the PP who says it's good to have the anonymity that a more 'standard' name brings.

OP, please yourself as long as the name does not have a horrible meaning and is reasonably easy to spell. Giving baby a more usual middle name is a good solution - they can use that if they have an issue with the name themselves when they grow up.

Well there you go!

i hasten to add my child’s name is spelled in the traditional way for this country, very much say as you see and spell as you hear. When we were in london there were a couple of others i knew. It’s only here that people treat a name from outside the top 100 as completely bizarre. A lot of new people have moved to our school post pandemic (wfh lets them) so the name pool has suddenly diversified greatly which is nice!

It is selfish, self-indulgent, attention-seeking and cruel to give your child a wacky name. It is done by parents who are thinking only of themselves, relishing the idea of their new "accessory" (aka their child) being different and special, with no regard to the challenges that child may face in the future.
Yes sometimes the child develops a personality to match their wacky name, but many don't, and are then stuck with an attention-seeking name, when in fact they just want to be ordinary.

Our children don't belong to us. We create them and look after them until they are old enough to be independent, but ultimately they are individuals who will make their own lives and choices. Giving them a name to fulfil our desires to be a bit "out there" is selfish, needy and pathetic in my opinion.

I wanted to give my daughter an Irish name but I was worried about her being subject to sectarianism and/or her having to correct people all the time.

Her dad also wanted to give her a particular name I didn’t want because it matches other names in my family too closely.
We compromised on a common first name and went for the Irish spelling of the name my husband wanted for the middle name.

I went to school with a Richard Richards. Funnily enough in the sixties no one really battered an eyelid

My eldest has quite an unusual name and youngest a very common, traditional name, both because we loved the names rather than choosing a name due to how popular/unpopular it was.

Neither have caused any issues, although it is simpler not having to spell the common name. The older child likes their name though, and can go by an abbreviation which is the same as an abbreviation of a very normal name so they have the option of that if it ever bothers them.

The names mentioned here aren't so different.
How would you feel if your parents called you 'Wolf'?
Something that caught my eye a while back...