How popular are the top 100 names?

[nappyaddict]

I have just looked through them here

Of the boys names, the only primary aged ones I've not come across are:

Zachary (but I know a Zack)
Gabriel
David
Bailey
Robert
Ewan

And for the girls:

Gracie (but I know Graces)
Anna
Tia
Faith
Hope
Julia
Maria
Florence
Courtney
Maryam

Glad it worked in practice cat!
I think the theory is that mothers and fathers think of their parents names and that generation as uncool.
Much is given to sounding like an old lady but we frequently give names from our grandparents and older (these are the trendy old names). What we really dont give is the people we grew up with as middle aged! So the names that our children will never choose are our names with a few classics exceptions.

So for anyone who really doesnt want anyone else in the playground to have the same name you have a list! Or just think of the names of your parents generation Susan, Geoff, that type of stuff. Yep sounds old to me!

I think those "sensible" girl's names like Anne, Jane, Claire etc are about to come back with a vengeance. A reaction against the trends of the last few years to be quite frilly/old lady/ultra feminine sounding, eg, Olivia, Grace, Isabella, flower names. Wouldn't be surprised if shouting Judith or Susan at nursery gets a few heads turning in 10 years or so.

I do hope that Geoff doesn't come back in but I would never have thought that Esme, Edith or Eva would return and they have...also there's bound to be some try-hards who name their child Geoffrey and say "oh it's after Chaucer". Don't get me wrong, I like Chaucer, but no baby has ever looked like a Geoff!

I tried to persuade DH to call DS Jeffrey or Joffrey. I made no claims re Chaucer, I just quite like it, especially Joffrey (should say, DH is French, and Joffrey sounds a lot better in a French accent). I agree that no baby looks like a Geoff though!

honeybabymoon your top list covers my mum, aunts, and mums of my friends perfectly! And you're right, I don't think of them as cool or nice names, they're the names of people who told us off.... boring!

Joffrey is quite cool - if I met a Joffrey it'd make my day :)

If I met a Geoff and his mum and dad "just quite liked it" or named him for someone I'd think fair play!

I'm going to push for Joffrey for number 2 (if and when) :o

But in principle I agree. I remember reading "The worst witch" as a child with Mildred, Enid, Maud and Ethel, I thought they were awful names and still giggle a little inside when they crop up in threads!

honeybabymoon I'm very jealous btw. I went heavily into sociolinguistics the last couple of years of my degree and dreamt of doing a thesis on names; alas, it wasn't relevant to my degree, so would have had to have been an MPhil or PhD project, and I didn't think I could justify the time or money for my own weird obsession!

I like Jeffrey!

Thanks so much Honey. I found that facinating!

Lucy, Rebecca, Catherine and Molly are all real classics which have lasted the test of time. Not sure about boys names. My dd insists that there's a Tracey in year 4 which I find bizarre. She is only 4 and I know there's a Casey in year 4 so wonder if she's just got muddled.

honey could you give me a bit more info on femanine, masculine names please, eg a few more examples of each?

Im so pleased that you are finding this interesting! There were hardly any studies on first names phoenetics so it was an unusual choice even within linguistics. The more common things to names to study by far are place names and surnames.

I cannot find my dissertation as it must be in storage somewhere so here are a few more bits...

Classics
medoitmama - If by classics you mean names that have been in the top 100 (england and wales) for the last 50 or so years Im not sure the list is technically right. There are only 5 or so girls names in that list (around 22 boys names).
Two of the girls names are Hannah and Maria from memory. They are not the ones you would expect. Catherine possibly. Rebecca unlikely. Im almost sure Lucy and Molly would not be.
The boys classics are much more predictable.

Feminine/Masculine
There are quite a few masculine and feminine phoenetic traits. I wont go into them all in detail but its to do with the sounds and length (eg more syllables=more feminine). I had a scoring system.
More examples of masculine girls names are:
Anne/Ann, Irene, Maud.
More examples of feminine boys names:
Oliver, Jamie, Anthony,Joshua,Timothy.

If you have a name in mind I can let you know if it is at either end of the spectrum. What you have to remember is that it is fashion dependant (see below).

An example and another topic...
Geoff vs Jeffery/Joffery/Geoffery
Caveat - I only studied the phoenetics of the names not the spellings so Jeffery and Geoffery are the same to me if that makes sense. Depends on how you pronounce Joffery.

Geoff and Jeffery are very different names. As are John and Jonathan. Dan and Daniel etc.
Geoff is currently not popular yet nappyadict likes Jeffery. Jeffery is a trendy name as it has feminine traits. (see above).

Fashion
Feminine traits are much more fashionable and socially popular at the moment than male ones in the first names of both sexes AT THE MOMENT. This is why you get more Jonathans insisting on being called Jonathan and why Jeffery is liked in this group. Also for babies there is a preference for cute (often feminine) versions.
Oliver is the most popular boys name. Phoenetically it has no masculine traits at all and has many feminine traits. If someone was looking at English language and looked at the patterns of the names they would most definitely conclude that Oliver is a girls name. It would rate higher than Sarah, Catherine, Laura, Faith, Hope etc.

More caveats
This is only applicable for England and Wales. Each culture has different opinions on what is masculine and feminine.

Freya and Isla please! I imagine they're quite feminine but will leave it to the expert - Honey.

Freya is slightly above medium fem and Isla a bit higher than that I would say.
They are quite popular at the moment. They are in the 20-30 range but I would imagine they would go up.
All the ones I like are popular too. We are just products of our time!

um my prediction of Freya and Isla going up has just increased as one of the other threads (Help! Stuck for a name!) is talking about exactly those two names so check it out!

That's really interesting honeymoonbaby! I know a toddler called Jeff.

I like it.

have you read the babynamewizard honeybabymoon/? it had a lot about the sounds of names. How people of the one generation all independently 'invent' such similar names. Why our best friend since we were 7 'steals' our favourite name (eg, similar values, conscious of the same zeitgeists etc). It was a really American perspective but still very interesting. Haven't go it any more unfortunately.

ps, do you think that in a few decades names ending in ly will be automatically perceived in America to be only Feminine? Stanley and Finlay are used for girls. I remember reading when naming one of my dc, an American psychologist and name-obsessive (ck evans) 'warning' that any boys name ending in ley given to a baby would be considered a girls name by the end of his life.

What do you think of that?

Very true what you say about different cultures re masc and fem.

DS has a name that I think sounds quite feminine, has 4 syllables etc, but DH's grandad (French) told us he loved it because of how masculine and strong it sounded :o

Valium - I think I would agree with the -ley/my names ending up as feminine only. DSIL has a niece called Presley, I assumed for ages she was talking about a nephew. DSIL thinks it's a very girly sounding name, so I think she'd say that about all -ley names.