to tell friend that her baby name choice is not unusual?

[toastofthetown]

My friend is expecting her first baby later this year. As I’m massively interested in baby names I asked her if she had anything in mind. She said she wanted something unique and is planning on using Aurora. I said that Aurora is a gorgeous name, but has risen hugely in popularity over the last few years and is now in the top hundred. My friend seemed annoyed with this and told me that it is a very uncommon name with only a few born each year, so I just changed the subject.

Since then I’ve been wondering if I said the wrong thing. Was I unreasonable to point out how popular the name is? I wouldn’t have said anything bad about the name itself, but l didn’t want her to regret her choice later, because she didn’t know about the sudden spike in popularity.

665 named aurora in 2017. It’s not common, but it’s definitely not unique. I don’t think you were being unreasonable to mention it is rising in popularity if it is genuinely important to your friend that she uses a unique name.

Actually, not Mulan. But Tiana, Merida, Rapunzel...

And I agree - it’s the child that’s unique not the name.

I once went on a job interview for teaching, where one of the other candidates taught a class with 2 girls in it each named Unique.

itsquiet I have a friend who named her baby Briar-Rose. I was a bit

This is why I didn't tell anyone my name choices prior to birth. When someone tells you their name choice just smile and say lovely.

Perhaps by 'unique' she just means not the usual names you hear every day - Olivia, Emily, Ava etc.

It might be on the up but I doubt she will find herself with 3 other Aurora's in her P1 class like I did with my name.

If you want a really unusual name no-one has right now 70s standards are the way to go ;) No babies being called Louise, Joanna, Claire or Sarah that I have heard of

Or Helen or Julie

Unique names are vanishingly rare. Your name’s not unique unless you were, are, and will remain the only person ever with that name.

Unusual or low ranking names are not “unique”.

Your friend will have to make a name up if she wants genuine uniqueness.

Someone I met recently, with a baby called Ava, was waxing lyrical about how they’d come to such a groundbreaking decision to use such a classic and unusual name and then she went on to explain that she was the first of her friends and family to have a baby and hadn’t met really any other parents yet. I was encouraging her to get out to groups and met other parents and socialise. She’ll be in for a shock, unfortunately, once she meets the every other girl in our area called Ava!

I just used the name voyager graph as recommended by PP. My DD name never in top thousand in any time period. Still not unique though. I think you need to tell her to make one up if she wants unique!

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/babynamesenglandandwales/2017

I find this fascinating!

My little boy's name never comes up on any lists (suggestions for names, hated names, loved names, nothing!) and yet it's a traditional name!!

Do you think she's naming her child Aurora in the hope that she's more likely to sleep?

@KurriKurri that's my dc's name, though I assumed that Merlin was way more popular. I wanted him to not be one of 6 in the class but I didn't want him to be unique and never meet another one. Oops?

Dc2 has a slightly more common name, I did better research to make sure he wouldn't be as unusual.

As pp said, there were 665 Aurora's in 2017, if she wanted an unusual name she's in for a shock. I would have told her too as it was obviously and important feature of the name to her.

All these Briars!
I had a uni flatmate (in the 80’s) whose girlfriend came to visit. She’d recently decided to change her name to Briar (from Becky), and was the most annoying, pretentious hippy type. The other flatmates (not me) called her Brian for the duration of her visit!

Thing is you don’t know until you hang around with lots of small children. My friend named her baby Noah and I thought that was amazingly cool and unusual until I had a baby myself and realised there were loads.

I think name voyager is USA, try the dark greener names site for England and Wales.

Do you think she's naming her child Aurora in the hope that she's more likely to sleep?

So that's what I did wrong

@GummyGoddess

Oh, my giddy aunt Florence. Where was this site when I was looking for baby names! I searched and searched but could only find American ones!!!

Right, which also makes them not unique @ReaganSomerset

Gummygoddess

Not really more encouraging for Aurora for UK than US - also clearly trending massively upwards:

names.darkgreener.com/#aurora

names.darkgreener.com/#aurora

Is anyone else wondering what @Justaboy named their child?

Cross post with Lisa! 😂

From BBC article:

665 baby girls called Aurora born in the UK in 2017.

Aurora ranked 80 out of 7,508 names for girls in 2017.

OP, none of your business. If your friend wants to do the research, she can. Just smile and nod!

No @crooked me, but as PP pointed out, for truly unique names you have to make one up, excluding all names not just Disney Princess ones. As other PP have opined, it is therefore probable that Op's friend meant highly unusual. My point was that many Disney princesses have highly unusual names.