to hate popular names

[macbooksticker]

Well I actually love a lot of the popular names at the moment but I wouldn’t use them as I grew up with an awfully popular name in the early 80s and DSD1 had the same issue in the 00s and 10s. We both dealt with our peers calling us ‘ourname X’, teachers not remembering us or confusing us with other pupils with similar names etc.

I just don’t want that for DD. I want my child to be able to be seen as an individual and have a memorable name. DH thinks I am overthinking it as he likes the classic popular names of the late 2010s. AIBU?

I didn't think to check with dd2 just had a final shortlist of 2 and decided in delivery suite.
Popular, top 10, everywhere & rumour (via her big sis) that she'll be starting school with 3 others. I'm sure it will be fine, and i wouldn't change her name now unless she wanted to but I kinda wish I'd swapped her 2 names over!
Otoh arun/aaron is the most popular boys name in dd1's year & there are no duplicate girls names so it's hard to predict.
I think as small children they like sharing a name it's the adults that don't like it, but agree later on she might want to swap with middle name.

@Zoflorabore also in Liverpool and we wanted Oliver or Oscar. Ended up choosing something else, quite rare, and at 4 months old the kid next to him on the swings in Sefton Park had the same name 🤦

My DS has a now very popular name, it didn't make the 100 list 10 years ago and I had a few comments about it being out dated! Fast forward, and it's in the top 20!
While DD has a name that we haven't come across yet! And probably won't make the top 1000 list! ... unless....
It's really pot luck and I wouldn't worth to much about it.

A school teacher I know says that a lot of parents who go for unique names, may as well just call their kid “little bastard,” as that is what they will probably be known as in the long run anyway.

Be warned a name can have a regional spike. My dd name wasn’t even in the top 50 names, however she ended up in a class at primary school with 2 others.

Yanbu.
I was one of four at school and even at work I'm 'Meglet X'. It's annoying.
My DC's were given sensible names that weren't in the top 100.

Another thing to consider is that, these days, the effect of a popular name is much more diluted as people choose from a wider variety of names, IYSWIM. In 1986 in Scotland Laura was the most popular name with 1038 baby girls given that name. In Scotland in 2018, the most popular name was Olivia but only 444 babies were given that name. This is likely due to more people striving to find quirkier names, but it also means that if you do choose a popular name you’re less likely to run into someone of the same name all the time.

Also, a name can shoot up the tables, what might be rare in 2018 may be commonplace in 5 years.

Just choose something you love!

I’ve just Googled and it seems that my 2 year old’s name is top 20, yet we’ve been to many, many groups over the past 2 years and have never met another child with the same name.

Another Emma here (waves) DH also has a common name. I have a fairly common surname too.
DD has a name which is uncommon but not unusual as it's from a very well known play. This was the happy medium for us

I think if you called a little girl Emma or Mary now it would be lovely - underused and refreshing

I grew up in the 80s with an unusual name. I was very shy and hated standing out for being different so deliberately chose quite popular names for my DC. Even though they both have top 15 names, they each have no more than one other person in the whole of their primary school with the same name. There is a much wider range of names these days than there were when I was young. I am a teacher and it is very rare to have duplicate names in a class now.

It's just luck. DS has a name well outside the top 100 but there's another in his class and several more in his school!

I find it's a bit different to the past as although there are popular names it seems that overall there are more names being used.

So at school growing up I was one of 4 in a class with my name, 3 of them with my middle name too.

Now the most I've had when teaching is 2 in a class with same name. And it's often not the name you think it's likely to be either. For example two years ago I had 2 girls called Clementine in one class. This year it's Emma and Toby which are duplicated.

One of my children is called Anaya and no one has that name in her school

You see, this is what I mean about not knowing which names will be popular or not, and it carrying so much even between towns.

I work in an infant school and there are three girls called Anaya/Anayah .

Yet Ellie and Olivia were called up earlier as being over popular.

We currently have one Olivia in our school and no Ellie. Infact I've now taught an Ellie for around 5 or 6 years minimum.

When kids have silly names, they just get remembered for their silly name, not for their character, determination, how nice and pleasant they were.

Yes, imagine if you called a girls something silly and obscure, like Shirley. Only 6 girl babies in the whole country given that name, in the most recent years statistics.

(Deliberaely did not use DD names as an example. DD has two names, each of which is shared by only 20 babies in most recent statistics. Both are very common female names, much more popular than Shirley, but not in use for babies in the past twenty years.)

My DD has a name where there was less than a 100 born that same year (1998), went into the top 50 in about 2010, so is now considered one of those faddy 2010s names.

Oh well, I still love her name.

I like classic names but not necessarily overly common, not completely old fashioned though either. It’s a difficult balance but I think I met it with my four DC however one of the four names is a lot more common now eight years on... I couldn’t have predicted that one.

My own name was not common at all when I was at school in the 90s and 00s. It’s now extremely common. Again, couldn’t have been predicted at the time and my DM did not do it because it was faddy and popular at the time.

I think if you called a little girl Emma or Mary now it would be lovely - underused and refreshing

And yet I know way more Emma’s in DD’s age range than I do her more common name. Definitely not underused around here!

I think names will come full circle and in 20-40 years when Gemma, Lauren, Claire, Sarah, Darren, Ashley, Alan, and Scott are grandparents/great-grandparents then there will start to be babies named after them and the trend for "old fashioned" names will continue.

DD has been the only student with her name in her very large (1000+ school). Staff? Ah well that's another matter, loads of staff with her name.

Works the other way - just because there are four other Ellies in your DD's class it won't be like that when she is grown up and mixing with all ages, there will be a much more even distribution. It really doesn't matter.

I'm firmly in this camp avoiding the top 100 it just means that fewer children will have the name I was one of 6 in my year at school 3 in my form class it was annoying as hell. Saying that that though my name was 49 for the year I was born my cousin on the other hand her name was number 3 and I didn't go to school or meet anyone with her name and to this day only know her and 2 others after moving around the country and meeting a lot more people so I'm not sure name lists really mean much!! It also depends on where you live and demographic the name I've chosen for my DDs not in the top 100 but it's in the telegraph announcements top 5!

Whatever name you choose, please spell it the traditional way. To save a child having to frequently correct others.

Can someone please link the site where I can find out the popularity of a name of any given year?

My parents gave me a dull first name and an unusual middle name.

Nowadays babies never get my dull first name, but my unusual middle name (which I bloody loathe) is very popular.

Times change.