To wonder why people care about the popularity of baby names?

[fluffyanimal]

I can understand why you might not be able to decide between a selection of names. Or that you might want to know whether a certain combination of names sounds odd. But if you like a name, who cares whether it is popular or vanishingly rare? Why not just call your baby the name you like? I genuinely don't see why anyone would be concerned about this.

Because popular names date. Simple as that.

And sometimes they date very badly.

All of my children have a name in the top 20. None of them have another child in their year group with the same name. Infact in the wider circle of friends, none of them have a child with the same name or derivative.

Mind you, In my class at secondary I had 7 Carolines, 1 carolyn, 2 karens, 2 sharons, 2 tracys, 2 susans, 2 julies and a julia ... a susan, a suzanna, a sally

Just think - back in the 70s a load of people thought Kevin, Tracy and Sharon were just beautiful names. They must've done, since you don't give your lovely new baby a name you don't like. And lots of people obviously thought they were beautiful names, as lots of people chise them; ergo they became popular.

Most people wouldn't touch them with a bargepole, now.

Likewise, I personally wouldn't choose Ruby or Ava or Evie as a name for my baby now, as these names will be the Claires, Sarahs, Karens and Joannes of my generation.

My son has a name that is in the top 10 boys names, but he was the only child in his Primary school with that name and has never been in a class in secondary school with a child with that name. I wonder if popular names tend to cluster in particular areas of the country, and if we were somewhere down South there would be lots of boys with his name. So I think it hard to judge from what is in the top 100 or even the top 10 if a name will be popular in a certain area or school.

My name is uncommon but quite ordinary sounding. I have only ever met two other people with my name. I think that has quite an odd psychological effect in that I feel at some level that my name only applies to me, and find it quite jarring if I hear somebody address someone else with the same name. So I don't think it is a good thing to have an uncommon name.

I can understand why people don't want their child's name to become popular and then date. A woman I know called her children (born in late nineties) Sally and Simon. It was a really good choice because they are unusual for that age group without sounding odd, when everyone else was starting to go for old people's names like Mabel, Ruby, Arthur and so on.

I tend to be the only person with my name wherever I go, and I like that.

I also like my DCs to have unusual names. Not unheard of names - just names which aren't likely to crop up time and again.

My name was very popular (and it is objectively is a very pretty name ), BUT I was never called my given name, I was called my family name instead as there were 5 of us in the class.

I would not give my next child a popular name no matter how much i like it (and i did not so far).

I've got an Olivia, she's almost seven. I can honestly say I had no inkling of how popular it was set to become. It was my son who mentioned the name as there was one in his class. It struck me as pretty and (almost) unheard of in little girls these days...how wrong I was. Though to be fair there isn't another one in her school year.

Just goes to show, you never can tell. What might not be the name of every third little girl or boy now might well be five years down the line. Unless you're going to go down the very unusual name route there is a possibility it could happen to you. I actually bloody hate that it got so common but nothing I can do about it now.

So what's the solution to names dating. Do you go classic? Or unusual?