Anyone brave enough to look beyond the top 10 nanes!!

[MissKGF]

Why are all the babies I meet called Harry, Olivia, Jack etc etc. these names are perfectly lovely but I want something more individual, surely we're not that boring as a nation!!

Well I tried going for what I thought was a slightly unusual name (not top 100 last year). He's now 6 months old, just signed him up for nursery and two out of the seven boys in his group have the same name. I think we're all trying to be a bit different in the same way.

lots of people use more uncommon names. Just read the threads here for a start.

Yes, our son's name was used 16 times last year.

And I don't feel 'brave'. There are lots and lots of lovely classic timeless names outside the top 100, even outside the top 250 most popular names.

Ds' name is number 30 or something, which was surprising seeing as I have only met one other child that shares his name. I didn't even think about how popular it was, we just liked it! Dd I think is number 2 but also, we don't care, we just liked it!

None of my 4 have names in the top 10.. dd1's name was not in the top 100 list the year before she as born but went in the year sh was born as no 49 highest riser (I blame friends - she is named after JD Salingers "the Catcher in the Rye" not Friends) I still love her name. dd2 3 and ds have names I have never seen in top 100 dd2 only had 4 girls named hers in 2011

Ds1 has an uncommon name, Ds1 has one of the most common names going (top 3) They were just names we liked at the time. If you like a name then go for it despite the popularity. Btw Ds1 shares his name with another child on our street but we don't know anyone else with Ds2 name (yet!)

yes, I refused to use anything in the Top 100 no matter how nice it was.

DS's name has since scraped into the Top 100 but is pretty love it or hate it so I can't see it becoming too popular, let alone Top 20.

We sometimes forget WHY we name a person/place/thing - to identify it/him/her. Seems that many prefer to follow 'trends' and like names already widely used.

Life would be much more interesting and less confusing if there was more name diversity. Also, so many lovely names outside the top 100 or so are just being 'wasted' .

You can't help but but drawn into trends either though. When picking ds's name we wanted something outside the top one hundred, but a classic, 'proper' name. It seems everyone else was doing the same as us, and all the little boys are Casper, Wilfred, Arthur and Rory.

Everyone is influenced by trends whether they want to be or not. That's why even the parents who want to be different aren't calling their children Brian or Pamela.

We chose a family name for DS1 which isn't top 100 now but was probably top 10 in a grandfather generation.Chose a more unusual name for DS2,something around 250 at the time,just happened to be a name we both liked,and 2nd name is a top 10 name but has family significance.

Pamela! what a great name.