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Baby names

Find baby name inspiration and advice on the Mumsnet Baby Names forum.

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Original poster

National name stats - what does it mean in terms of numbers in class/ school etc?

14 replies

treecloud · 06/12/2010 17:23

Hi all, just wondering if I can possibly get some idea of how many children of the same name there will be in DS's class by looking at the name stats.

For instance, there were 3319 Benjamins born in 2009 - based on this, how many would you expect, on average to be in DS's class/ school.

I know there will be regional differences but is it possible to arrive at some kind of estimate? We like Benjamin but are to some degree bothered by how popular it is -although not massively so.

... or am I asking silly questions :D

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ragged · 06/12/2010 17:36

I think it's impossible to say.

There are two Bens in yr 4 at DC school (both Bens born 2001-2002). But none in current Yr6 or Yr2 up at the same school.

Komondor · 06/12/2010 17:44

About 1.3% of boys were called Benjamin or Ben in 2009.

MuffinMouse · 06/12/2010 21:59

Not sure if this helps but there are two in DC1's yr 2 class.

tammytoby · 06/12/2010 22:14

You need to add up all the variants of a name's spelling (e.g. Ben, Benjamin, Benedict if you want to include all Bens) and divide that by the total number of baby boys born last year. That gives you the percentage of boys named Ben in a given year.

tammytoby · 06/12/2010 22:16

And yes, it would bother me. We therefore chose names we loved for dd and ds that were outside the top 250 names. But not everyone is bothered about popularity.

cory · 07/12/2010 07:38

You can't predict at all. My Mum changed her mind about my mind because of its popularity: I never during my whole school career met another child with the same name. But plenty of children (and teachers) with the name she gave me instead .

We gave ds a name that is foreign, extremely unusual in this country, not even terribly common in my country of origin. There's a boy in the next street with the same name!

DilysPrice · 07/12/2010 07:46

There are no Bens in DCs entire school AFAIK. Jack was number one for years and years and I don't think I've ever met a single one in 8 years of playgroups/singing groups/nursery.
So it all depends.

tammytoby · 07/12/2010 09:07

"Jack was number one for years and years and I don't think I've ever met a single one in 8 years of playgroups/singing groups/nursery."

Really?! Where do you live?

DilysPrice · 07/12/2010 10:36

South London. The DCs are now at a very multicultural school, so that's not surprising, but I don't know any from NCT etc either, maybe the yummy mummies of Clapham moved on from Jack years ago darling.

orangepoo · 07/12/2010 10:51

You can't ever tell.

In my DS's reception year (abou 50 kids), there is one Jack and one Grace. I think they were the most popular names when current reception children were born. There is one Olivia as well, which I think is the most popular now. Bizarely, one of the duplicated names hasn't been in the top 100 for decades!

LaWeaselMys · 07/12/2010 10:53

It is absolutely an area thing. There are a lot of slightly more unusual names where I live like Cole, Mia, Alfie. Not as many James or Bens.

I choose a name that was around 25 in the list and met another baby with the same name a few months later.

tummytickler · 07/12/2010 12:01

I don't think you can tell.
I know only 1 Jack, but 3 little girls called Hebe (in a school, not a class, but still!).

bigbluebump · 07/12/2010 12:30

Yes, it must be regional. We're in Surrey and there is only 1 Jack in the entire primary school. But we have quite a a few Felixes, Quentins and Florences round here.

If there are no Jacks in some areas, there must be LOADS in others (given that more than 8000 Jacks were born in every of the last 10 years or so )!

mysteryfairy · 07/12/2010 14:15

My DD has a name which apparently about 300 children were called during the year she was born. Three of them (including her) are in her class of 33 at school.

On the other hand there isn't anyone in the class called by any of the top ten girls names at the time.

My fifteen year old DS has a name that was in the top ten when he was born and has only just dipped below top ten now. (I didn't think or care about such things or know any other children when he was born so had no idea it was popular.) However he is unique in his class and in fact in y10 (150 odd boys), although we do come across plenty of other boys with the same name at rugby, swimming etc.

Neither of them are remotely bothered by the popularity of their names. I often think I am glad DH reigned me in on my first choices - Orlando, Xanthe etc - as actually they might be hard to carry off in the area of Yorkshire where we live.

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