AIBU to think parents should stop being put off a name because it's popular?

[GreatStuff67]

I feel like I've read a lot of posts recently where parents are trying to decide on a name for their baby but the name they like best is popular and so they're unsure about using it. When I was at school we had multiple kids with the same name (myself included) and no one seemed to care if they shared their name with anyone else. When did popular start being a bad thing for a name? Am I being a grumpy git or are other people thinking 'Who cares if it's a popular name. If you like it, use it!'?

I don't understand how you don't understand it. In my DD's class there are more than half the class who need to use an initial because there is more than one in the class. In my DS2's year every single girl appears to be Eva/Evie/Ava/Aoife/Eve (I'm sure it can't be all of them, but its a LOT)

I don't want my children to be Name Initial. I don't want people to ask "which one?" I want them to be identifiable and just their name. It's not hard to understand and there is nothing odd about that. I picked names that everyone has heard of but they are each the only one in their year.

Names cluster by area too so it's quite normal to have duplicate names in a year group. It's hard to predict the particular one when you are naming a new baby though!

I was named for my paternal grandmother, who died when my father was a baby. I thought it was stodgy and boring growing up but I’ve grown to love the timeless elegant simplicity of it. And the fact I share it with historical figures and fictional heroines.

Even though popular names are given to under one in a hundred babies, so on the surface sharing names isn’t an issue, names aren’t evenly distributed across the country. I live and grew up in more rural areas, where naming tends to be more conservative. My primary school class had three Jameses, two Charlottes, two Lauras, two Daniels though I doubt that 12% of boys that year were called James. In contrast I know someone in more adventurous area name wise who came across another Balthazar, despite there only being nine other Balthazars born that year. There you’d be more likely to have duplicate of name like Artemis than Olivia.

@CupidStunt22 my child has a top 10 name and has been the only one in her school. The point is you can't predict it. There were 5 boys with the same name in other DDs class and it wasn't a top 100 name and they had all moved into the area from different parts of the UK after birth.

I had an unusual name for my age group. Two of us in my secondary school... and we were mixed up often administratively as people forgot there were two with the unusual name. The Claires, Sams and Sarahs never had that issue.

I'm notvsaying there is never 2 in a class, just that it isn't inevitable and can happen with unusual names too.