Would you rule out a baby name you love if it is popular?

When I was pregnant with DC2 (didn't know what I was having until I gave birth) I absolutely ruled out the name Joshua. It wasn't a name I loved although I didn't dislike it either, and was so popular and had been for a long time. Then I had the baby. We joke he may as well have had Joshua tattooed on his head as it was so obviously his name. 20 years later and we've only met a handful that are his age anyway.

And of course I love the name now.

I would just pick the name I liked and not worry about popularity.

For one thing, the names that are popular for children now won't necessarily be as popular in the new baby's age group (this goes both ways- there's a whole section in Freakonomics about the phenomenon of parents feeling they have independently chosen an unusual name only for it to turn out to be top 10 in that year).

For another, even if you manage to pick a name that isn't nationally popular you can still end up with three in one class- names aren't evenly distributed- and then imagine how you'd feel to have given up the name you actually wanted. Just go for the name you like, and accept that you can't control how many others you encounter.

you can't control how many others you encounter. You can a bit. If you choose something like Sophia or Evie, it's highly likely, but you could find that your Therese or Valentina is one of two in her Reception class.

You can see the names that are creeping up the popularity charts on the ONS website. I don't think it's that common for a name to suddenly pop into the top 20 from nowhere.
If a name has jumped from 99 - 48 - 22 then it's going to be trendy and possibly much higher next year.

But yes, I would just pick the name I liked and not worry about popularity.

It depends on how popular. My DD was going to be Joshua if she was a DS. But the sheer popularity of the name put me off the name totally. But we gave her a popular name anyway as we were not put off by its popularity. It’s not quite as everywhere as Joshua use to be though.
I think if you still love the name and the popularity has not put you off then use it.

I've got a Jack so no! Mind you he's mid 30s when Jack wasn't as popular as now. But I still would have called him that even with how popular it is because it is a family name.

No I wouldn’t, unless family/close friends had already used it

Depends on the name, I personally wanted to avoid top 10 and also anything that had become trendy as I thought it would then sound dated.

DS has a traditional family name from DH's side and culture in the end, and for the little one I'm pregnant with atm, if it's a boy it would be a traditional but not used that often biblical name (not anything so unusual it would fit in the Handmaid's Tale!) and a girl would be Aurelia. Love it, have loved it for years and years and don't care that it's got more popular or some people somehow think it sounds like areola. We'd pronounce it Ow-ray-lia and appreciate she'd have to let people know how to say it but me and DH both have first and last names that need spelling and telling people how to pronounce and we love them.

That said, I don't think you can always predict it - in my area there are SO many Reubens suddenly! It was on my list last time too, you'd never think it would be the name where they're Reuben A., Reuben B. in the same class.

The best you can do is play the odds, but how gutting to play and lose when you really wanted to call your daughter Sophie and instead you've ended up with one of three Gertrudes in a Sophie-free class.

I would rule it out as if you can avoid there being two or more of them in a class or year and office and so on I would. There are four of some names per year at our school, each lovely names and people, but they are all referred to by their full name to differentiate them. I love the website darker green.com where you can see how many are registered with a particular name per year. There was a name I loved when I had my first son but both the full name and the shortened version were heavily registered in the proceeding four years as names and I thought there would just be masses of them, and in fact, I have encountered masses of them. I’m not obsessed with having a truly unique name, of course there will be people with similar names to you as you go through life, but I would rule out one that is so popular that it would be an easy to avoid one.

And I've never actually met anyone else who has my name. Heard of them but never met them. So completely different ends of the popularity scale.

I ruled out Sebastian due to it suddenly having a surge of popularity.

Gosh these replies are soo negative 🙈

OP if there is a name you truly love then 100% use it. Who cares what anyone else names their kid or thinks of your choice? Imagine you listen to all this negativity, choose a name you don’t actually love and then even worse, someone close to you uses the name you actually love and you are left watching that far afar, while not ever getting to use that name yourself!

I had a girls name I have loved all my life and I eventually got to use it and I just absolutely adore it more and more everyday. She’s 3 now. It suits her beautifully and we have hardly ever meet any others to be fair but I’m sure we will over the years.

I have a very common name and have lived with that all my life and I admit it’s a bit dull, but to be fair my name actually is a bit dull, whereas the name I chose for my daughter is beautiful, timeless, classic, elegant.
I do really appreciate the anonymity that comes with my common name and the fact that everyone knows how to say it and spell it and if I’m ever feeling awkward in a situation I know that introducing myself is not going to make the situation any more awkward (not the case if I had to correct someone’s pronunciation or deal with raised eyebrows).

So there are pros and cons but truly you will never love another name as much in my opinion and you should go for it!

The website is https://names.darkgreener.com/.
The Baby names in England and Wales: 2025 - Office for National Statistics site has data for different areas.

Yes we didn’t want to use any names in top 20

I have a name that’s not unusual but not very common (I don’t think my name has been popular since 1900 😂). It’s a commonly used middle name, though. There was a girl in my class all throughout primary school that had the same name. I’ve never met another, though. I do like the fact that no one else has my name, especially at work where we have three people named Alex, two named Sam, two named Sarah, two named Kelly etc etc.

Names do tend to become trendy and then drop off in popularity. I wouldn’t worry too much, as long as it’s not super popular like Olivia etc

When I was a teenager I had my heart set on a particular girls name (years before I got pregnant). I had only heard it once in a book I was reading at the time.

Now, years later that name has become so popular that I wouldn't even consider it.

No, it wouldn’t bother me at all.

When I was at school there was one other girl in my class with the same name and I liked it.

Both my children had top ten names when they were born but you don’t hear many of their names nowadays.