Did you choose a popular (top ten) name? Do you regret it?

[fluzz543]

Just that really. DC 1 due soon and our favourite name for a boy and a girl are both in the current top ten. If you chose a popular name, has this bothered you once the child gets a bit older and you meet many more at school/nursery? I know a lot of people avoid popular names so I'ld love to hear experiences from people who have gone with them. Thanks.

A friend of mine has an uncommon name, but for the 6 years of secondary school she was in her class register right next to a girl with the same spelling and had two others in the year with an alternative spelling of the same name!

DH picked the names for both our kids and they are totally generic. Every other little girl and boy we meet has the same name.

I'm still secretly resentful about this. It's not like the names I would have picked were totally out there, just a bit less common. But DH is a very stubborn man and post-birth I just didn't have the energy to hold out against him.

"DH picked the names for both our kids and they are totally generic. Every other little girl and boy we meet has the same name."

As I said, even the most popular name is only 1 in 50- you must be very unlucky, even if they are Oliver and Sophia!

Yes I did, no I don't regret it at all. I really cannot identify in any way with the urge for an unusual name.

My daughter is called Sophie - very popular, one of three in her class at primary. I think she quite liked being one of the Sophies - certainly never objected. She's a very distinctive individual so didn't need an unusual name to differentiate her (does anyone???) and actually it probably helped her fit it.

I'm a Katherine/Kate. There are loads of us of my age. Even more so as I get older as it seems to be particularly popular in my area of work for some reason. Again, I quite liked it when I was younger and I'm indifferent now. Again, I don't think that having a popular name in any way undermines my individuality.

Far, far preferable as a child to a very unusual name in my opinion.

Having said that, I might feel slightly differently if we had a very popular surname. I can see it might be slightly inconvenient to be confused with someone else. I believe we are the only family in the country with our surname. My maiden name was not particularly unusual but not particularly widespread either.

Yes, but they're not evenly distributed, so its not as if you can think 'Oh, statistically, there's not likely to be another Jack in my Jack's class' with any certainty. I've no idea whether there are regional stats for name frequency, but in my own experience (lived in London when I had my son, now live in the rural Midlands), there's a far greater variety of names in metropolitan areas - related to ethnic diversity in part, but also to greater cultural self-confidence, and also of course just the fact that naming your child something 'unusual' is usual.

When my son was born, the NCT coffee mornings I took him to had babies called Soren, Thiago, Ferdinand, Ace, Miranda, Mohamed etc. at the local toddler groups in the surrounding villages where I live now, the children are named from a much smaller group of names - they seem virtually all to be Harry, George, Louis, Jack, Isabel/Izzy/Belle/Bella, Lily, Kitty, Emilia/Amelia/Millie etc.

Yes.
For both boys
Ds1 is nearly 13 and it's only been this year that here has been another child with his name in his class.
Ds2 has never been in school with another child with the same name....in fact there isn't another boy with his Name in the whole school!
Lots of Jayden's, Mitchell's, Alexander's, kaydens, Joshua's, Ethan's.....

yep top ten name here - I had no idea, I just liked it.

If I could go back I would call her Tallulah or Antigone.
It is Sophie by the way .

Either at nursery or amongst friends with daughters, I know at least one girl under age 10 with a name from the 2014 top ten list, except the name Chloe. The children at nursery with the same names are known by their first and surnames, to each other and the staff. I do know some children with uncommon names too. Most of those are the only ones I know with that name, including my own DD. I think if you really love a name then just go for it. Our name criteria was something that sounded familiar but actually not often used, it was around the 800-900's on lists in the last few years and we've not come across another yet.

Sounds like she had a lucky escape, Sunny!

awwww Hak, c'mon, little 'Tiggy' would have been so cute!

Ratmort, I agree. I can't believe my ds is the only Oliver in his school (a 4 class intake!), but he is! We are in a metropolitan areas. There's 2 Mohammeds in his class and used to be 2 Adams, but no other Olivers in the whole school! (We are moving soon, out into the burbs, so he may have to become Oliver Surname).

We chose top 10 names for all three of our children. Partly because I like classical names. Popular names are usually popular because they are nice. I Also feel that you ought to give your children a name that will never embarrass them and is suitable for all circumstances. For eg Kate is a nice name for the future Queen Mum, whereas Chelsy was just wrong. When people have exciting weird names, occasionally it is spot on for the child, but more than not it is a bit like tattoos, you can date people within a 5 year bracket.

Then we had practical considerations. We are a bilingual family so the names needed to work in both languages. Our surname is long so we had to choose a shortish first name. Our surname starts with a vowel so we had to chose a name that did not run from the first to the surname. SIL had chosen themed names for her children so we needed names that did not fit her theme....

At then end of the day, we only had about 5 or 6 that were right. I like the names we chose for our 2 boys, they suit them, but I am not so sure about the name for DD. Sophie has been extremely popular, there are 2 in her class and at one point about 5 in our street. But then I still don't know, 8 years later, which name would have been better.

I think you can't go wrong with choosing a name that you genuinely love, regardless of its popularity, without trying to be clever about it.

I think people think that coincidences are less frequent than they actually are. Dd has a name that was very unusual until it became very popular in the early 2000s, but there were 3 in her year 7 form.

I also think (dons tin hat) that it's a class issue. The posher you are the less you are likely to be bothered by your child having the same name as someone else- you might even think it's a good thing. At my Dd's grammar school, the only two vaguely unusual names in her year were Cherry and Kismet. And Kismet tried to keep it quiet and called herself Kizzy. At ds's much less posh school there are loads of made up names and unique spellings. Makes birthday cards a minefield.

Hakluyt, it may also be that the less posh people are more confident don't give a toss and call their kids what they like rather than having to have a 'classic' name or worry that people will think their name is 'chavvy'.

Tbh, I have never met a un-posh person who was worried that another child in their class would have the same name and therefore named their child 'Jayden'. Tons of Jaydens around.

Here's a good name which is dying out

Haven't read the thread but I chose a less common - but not unusual - name for DD1. In top 100 but only just.

Out of 60 kids in her reception year, there were two others with the same name.

So popularity of.name will have som e bearing, but it could go completely the other way!

Hmm, I don't know if 'posh' is the right descriptor. Rather - solidly middle class.

Very posh people don't really call their kids Sophie, Oliver, Max, et al; the middle classes do.

Not regretting, just constantly fighting with people who want to butcher that name. Its William, NOT Billy or anything else.

Don't know about that Feoija, there was a Lady Somethingorother in my NCT group and she named her son Oliver.

LOL, it's not a blanket rule, there will always be exceptions.

But the upper end and the, um, other end tend to care less what people think and would be far more comfortable going with Sheherazade or Cressida, or even something normal but simply less main stream / dateable, like Tabithaor Felicity or Sybil.

As PP have said, there's a vast swathe of middle ground between top ten and yoon'eeq.

I ruled out all top 50 names wouldn't even consider them when I was expecting 2 years on you guessed it- now top 50 looking at Scotland name stats earlier in the 30's now so you never can tell.
Also dd started in her preschool class there is another little girl with the same name something I didn't want but actually it's not a big deal and quite sweet actually.
I love the name so I can't expect others wouldn't love it too.

"Very posh people don't really call their kids Sophie, Oliver, Max, et al; the middle classes do."

Er, yes they do! Unless you don't consider the Queen's grandchildren very posh. And there is an argument for that- the really old English families are a bit snooty about them. But even those families are all George and James and Catherine and Sophia..........

"Very posh people" give their children traditional names but then call them by nicknames like Tiggy and Patch

'very posh' people call their children Araminta or Cressida and nickname them Mint and Cress.
Unless it is a boy in that case he will be called Cosmo or Jocelyn.

MerryMarigold I met a baby Gary a few months ago! Poor thing, I can't imagine anyone looking at a baby now and thinking yep, he looks like a Gary.