To give my child an ungoogleable name?

[MrsMogginsMinge]

Admittedly I'm only about five minutes pregnant, so this is still at the level of a general muse rather than a real dilemma.

DH has a charming, plain, frequently occurring (especially in Wales) surname, which sounds like a first name. You know the sort of thing. My taste in first names is pretty conservative, especially for boys - I like the old school classics, preferably biblical (despite being a godless atheist myself). So future DC is likely to be one of many many people with his or her name.

Is this condemning him or her to a life of mediocrity or secretly a stroke of genius? I'm convincing myself that the greatest gift one could give a child of the 21st century is relative internet anonymity. AIBU?

(Yes, I know, we should just choose a name we like. But I'd be interested to hear thoughts)

I have tried hard to keep my internet presence low, and that of my DCs but one of them is the first link that comes up when you google their name but then they are the only one in the whole country as far as I know - google returns only 20 for that name and they are all of them.
My second children has to go to page 5 of google before they find themselves, my third has to go the second page on google so they are fairly public on t'net :(

I have a unique name afaik.

I have taken the precaution of living an unusually dull life.

If anyone wanted to find me they could.

I just make sure no one would have any interest in doing so :-)

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I've just googled my name and a Canadian porn star popped up, and my name is pretty boring, never ever thought to Google it before.

20 yrs ago, maybe... For those that believe that anonymity for anyone in the affluent, technology driven ruled. Western world is possible - head sand buried.

None of us have that pleasure. We gave that up when we embraced our 'brave new world'

You should check out the book 'Potty, Fartwell & Knob' by Russell Ash, about real names from the three centuries that appear in the censuses. You might not say yes to a date with Dick Itchcock (c.1856) or Merrie Leper (c.1801)...

I don't know whether an unusual name is a burden or not, although I heard from one of them that over six lads with the same common name were arrested in Hastings one year for a serious crime as their name had been given by a witness, and at least half of them (innocent) spent a very nasty 36 hours in a cell each for no reason. That's something that does create problems if it stays on record.

So it's not just the internet to consider when thinking of 'invisible' names. The police like to be thorough. And there's identity theft... Didn't Heather Mills reportedly pass herself off as another Heather Mills in a job interview, as the other woman had more qualifications?

Yes - here it is. Funny article too, about the two Heathers scandal :) ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/9297872.html

never thought of this but just googled my daughter including middle name and they all seem to be very old or dead (including a murderer in 1939!!)

We have a VERY common surname and relatively common first names (in DS case VERY common, so without the middle names there'd be millions of them (mostly Irish even though we're not).

The internet is the least offending... We're duped into that. The govt, insurance/banking institutions buy and sell our data all the time and we let them. CCTV. Facial recognition. Voice recognition, store cards, loyalty cards... It's almost impossible to be anonymous. I came across TWO news articles last week and I was on s picture accompanying it. Had absolutely ni idea. I recall the photo being taken but do not remember anyone asking if it could be used in this way.

By the time our kids are our age, they'll all be hooked directly into technology anyway...

I went from a very unique name, to a very, very common one when I married. I'm ungoogleable as my current name, even with some info about where I live/schools/age etc. My maiden name is very googleable but thankfully I was married before the internet properly took off and there's nothing to be ashamed about!

I Googled DS's name and it comes up as the third hit due to his name being in the school newsletter.

Expecting number 2 and it's hard enough to pick a name without adding something else to worry about! As long as there isn't two others with the same name in their class, the initials don't spell something rude and a quick google search doesn't bring up a serial killer or a z list celeb with a dodgy past, then I'm happy. :)

I googled the name Mysha (pronounced mee-sha) just to make sure there were no porn stars out there first. luckily non at that time....but have accidentally given her the same name curse as me. Mine is Karen, but pronounced car-ren ( South African thing) with a stupid long dutch surname so she got her dads only slightly easier Indonesian name..problem is that I've already had the phone calls saying 'hello. is that karen (British pronounciation) , Mysha's (as in my- sha) mum?
so...maybe think over the pronounciation and spelling too :(

Expecting number 2 and it's hard enough to pick a name without adding something else to worry about! As long as there isn't two others with the same name in their class, the initials don't spell something rude and a quick google search doesn't bring up a serial killer or a z list celeb with a dodgy past, then I'm happy. :)

Um....husband's opinion?

Ungoogleable won't even be a thing in twenty years time. There will be much more sophisticated ways of finding people online, even one John Jones among ten thousand.

Give him the name if you love it but don't give him the name so The People can't find him. It's a bit tinfoil hat territory.

My first name is common, but shared with a couple of famous film stars. My surname is unusual, but shared with a very famous person.
Google my name and I come up so far down the list of matches that even I can't be bothered to find myself.

Wow, not something I ever thought of but I did give my DCs relatively common names (and DH's surname which is also common) in reaction to hating my own unique combination of rare first name and very rare last name when I was little.
Professionally its pretty good to have an unusual name, as people do seem to remember it (conversely does make bad interviews seem so much worse, as someone above said). But I am also VERY cautious in expressing views on any online forum using my real name or RL nicknames (FB/Twitter/LinkedIn).
So I have inadvertently done the opposite for my kids...!

I have a completely ungoogleable name. My surname is (I presume) the same as your DH's and my first name has been quite popular (but never too popular) for the last 2000 years. My dad knows 3 other people with the exact same name as his, but I've never met anyone with my name despite there being >500 on Facebook.

I'd say go for a top 100 but not top 10 first name and you get the best of both worlds.

This is more than just a hypothetical discussion actually. One of my friends was horrified to find that when she googled her 11-year old DS's name, his PHOTO came up as the number one entry, listing not only his name but also a location near his house and his school. The photographer who was at the end-of-school party one year had just tagged and posted the photos on the internet. Madness. She had to call the photographer and ask him to take the photos down, but she had no control on whether he did or not. So... my vote is for anonymous mediocrity!

I've just googled myself and found that there are only 2 of us in the UK and we're in the same county! Funny because the surname (dh's) is not a local name. There's one other in Australia.

I have an unusual first name and have married into an unusual (and unspellable) surname so my DCs were purposely given well-known names which no one with half a brain should spell wrong as they are always going to have to automatically spell their surname. It seemed cruel to make them spell out the whole thing every time they had to give their name.

If you've got an obviously spelt surname I'd go for something slightly less common for a first name, it must be quite annoying to be constantly mixed up with other people of the same name.

Just call her Amazon Facebook.

As long as you don't call him Princess Consuela Banana Hammock, should be fine

When you take my first name (not hard to deduce) and last, it's quite unusual but there are severs of us! One in aus, a lot in America, one in America has a husband with the same not too common name as mine and two chilldren with the same initials.