To wonder why you would pick a name in the top 10?

[FreckledFrog]

So the latest top 100 baby names have been released this week. It has prompted me to wonder why on earth you would pick a name in the top 10-20 names.

There are thousands of beautiful, unique names out there, yet so many people are happy to pick the same names despite knowing their children will go to school with multiple Olivia's, Noah's, Amelia's or George's.

Do these people not desire some originality for their children?

Am I being unreasonable? I have a very very unusual name and have picked less common names for my children and I wonder if this clouds my judgement?

Who's to say there's not a little baby Uber somewhere.

But you don't know until after the event what the top 10 names are going to be.

I named my DD a name that wasn't unusual as such, it was a traditional name, but one that we hadn't heard a baby called in years. Even in hospital they commented that it had years since they had one. The next year the baby name statistics appeared and it was a bit more popular than the previous year, and the year after that it had soared and was inside the top ten. We had no idea that would happen, we thought we were choosing something that was unusual enough for her to not meet anyone with that name (neither my husband nor I knew anyone, adult or child, with the name) but it turned out that she is one of many.

I have a friend with a whacky name who called her children ordinary names so they weren't ostracised as she was at school.

DS was the only person named with his name in Scotland the year he was born. DDs name is in the top 50. Maybe even top 20. I wish we had given DS a more popular name. Though it had meaning to us (family name) people just don't hear it. Even when we spell it. I am aware we have set him up for a lifetime of explaining and re-explaining his name

I get it, insofar as the Top 10 in 2017 will be nowhere as commonly used as the Top 10 of the 1970's/1980's so really, those names aren't that common.

However my own daughter's name remains solidly out of the Top 100, between 110-120 and is nothing eyebrow raising.

I suppose people can't help the names they like. I do find myself surprised when people choose say a name like Jack, now. The original Jacks of the 1990's start of the upswing in popularity are old enough to be parents themselves now.

Beacause you don't know the list of top 100 names and just picked a name you liked? Or a family name? You don't have to trawl through 'top 100' lists of names to choose one you know.

This is completely irrational, but the one that annoys me is May. Every other girl under the age of 5 has May as her middle name. Never just because the parents liked it but there is always somebody's great granny called May. Just use the bloody name!

It doesn't matter how popular a name is or I.It just takes another person in your area to call the child the same name.

1. I wouldn't know which names were in the top 10 or 20
2. I don't think 'unique' is a quality I'm looking for in a name. All people are unique regardless of their names. Most unique names sound either tacky or try-hard imo.

Surely you'd check the top 100 names though?

I agree with you OP. When I named my children, I chose names that were very unpopular for babies at the time, definitely not in the top 100. Throughout their childhoods, they were the only child in their schools with that name.
However, their names gradually came back into fashion and one year when DD was in her late 20s, her name was the number one name given to baby girls and DS's name was in the top 5 of boys' names!
Fashions come and go!

I never thought about the top 10 list when I named DD. I named her what I thought was a classic name (actually pretty old fashioned) as it was a family name and there was a long story about my name and what it should have been etc etc
Turns out both her first and middle names were in the top 10 even though she's named after someone born around 100 years ago!

Meh. If anyone judges me because of her name, I couldn't squeeze out a solitary fuck!

When I picked my sons name it wasnt even in the top 100 and now it is quite high up 5 years on. I think names represent a generation and its inevitable, I also dont think its a big deal.

Both of my children have popular names that I've since learned are in the top 20 (or were in their year of birth). I didn't know that at the time though because I didn't bother checking. We chose the names simply because we liked them. It turns out though that despite their popularity my children are the only children in their respective classes with their names so aren't actually known as Holly C*

*Not really my dd's name 😂

My name is quite obscure then I went to school with someone of the same name. I always ended up being the 2nd one coz it where we were alphabetically in the registrar used to piss me off coz I was older.
Older 2 kids have semi normal names not in top 20 for few years before they were born etc. Then ds1 ended up going to school with another lad with same name AND same birthday!!! his nickname is his middle name so school just used to call him that instead. Ds2 has a obscure name and no one pronounces it correctly and even he's given up correcting people

This is completely irrational, but the one that annoys me is May. Every other girl under the age of 5 has May as her middle name. Never just because the parents liked it but there is always somebody's great granny called May. Just use the bloody name!

Aibu to wonder why you would pick a name in the top 10?

Well presumably because you like that name Isn't it as simple as that?

What has struck me about these lists since giving DS1 a name which has been popular for centuries is how much regional variation there is in what is popular. There should be tons of boys with the same name around and yet not a word of a lie in 8 years of playgroups, years of nursery and now school, and it's a massive school, I have come across a grand total of 2 others with his name. It's because people are being try-hard! For example I know more than one small child called Otis in my area at the moment. Makes me smile that my child 's supposed to be the one with the unoriginal name.

When I visit my parents in a different part of the U.K. we do tend to hear my DS's name a lot more.

The original names this year may well be in next year's top 20.

One of my kids has a very popular name and the other doesn't. I liked both names. I think it would be more weird to base your name choice on what other people are or aren't calling their children.

This is how many of the top ten names I know (kids):
Olivia - 0
Amelia - 1
Emily - 0
Isla - 0
Ava - 1
Isabella - 0
Lily - 0
Jessica - 0
Ella - 1
Mia - 0

Oliver - 0
Harry - 1
George - 0
Jack - 0
Jacob - 1
Noah - 1
Charlie - 0
Muhammed - 0
Thomas - 1
Oscar - 1

And thats kids of literally everyone i know, every child in my dds class at school and any kids at the Childminders.

So what is technically most used isnt always overused.

2 children - one name which is well outide the top 100 and another child with a name very high up in top 10's. Just what we liked.

I wasn't going to not use my dad's name just because it was #8 the year DS was born. It's a long term popular name that DH and I always liked before we even met each other. DS has never been in the same cohort as a namesake.

DS2's name was #124 when he was born. He was named after another relative, another long term popular name but a little off trend. Our close friends used it as a middle name shortly after for their own reasons. There was another child with the same name in his cohort at nursery. There's another in DS1's class.

Pick a name you love that you think a child is likely to be happy to live with through their life. Don't care about popularity because you can't predict if someone else will have the same smart idea too. (I did however care about the supply teacher test; can a supply teacher walk in the room and say it/ spell it correctly, or are you inflicting a life of the child having to constantly correct people upon them)

Out of the thousands of children I've ever taught, only two have been called Claudia. Both were in the same class

Picked an unusual scandi/germanic name for DD (think Astrid but not that) thinking we were being a bit unique ... Turns out here's three of them in the (small-ish) school!

Very popular names are very popular because people do like them!

My first son's name is in the top 80s... I've heard it several times since he was born 2 years so, and my neighbour had her son 3 days after I gave birth and he has the same name (she didn't know my son's name and we'd never discussed it).

My 3 month old has a top 20 name. Only name we agreed on but I haven't heard it as much as I've heard my first son's.

I think there is some collective consciousness too. My mum swears she'd only heard my name in the context of an old actress. It is a really quite common name for my age with several of us in my high school year