I thought I was so original ...

[Carbohol78]

Freya, there were no Freya’s, DD10, other option was Isla, again no Isla’s, I thought I’d found a pretty, not odd, but not over-used name. Now there’s loads of both!

Anyone else think they were “oh so original” and now the classrooms are flooded?

My name is fairly unusual and sited on here as a 70s name! My aunt had a Joseph in 1981 and everyone said how odd and old-fashioned it was. Now there are loads!

A teacher who wailed to me that she had chosen Evie because she didn't know a single one
You all know what happened.

17 years ago we decided to call our DS Logan.

No one had heard of it. No one but us liked it.

Now there's loads of 5/6 year olds with the name.

I've managed to call all of my dc spectacularly unpopular names somehow. Only just scraping into the top 100. Although I guess that means they are still quite popular.

I think they are nice names, but I've doomed them to never know the joy of a personalised pencil from the name shops that specialise in name tat. It's not all bad having a popular name.

Sarahh2014 did you know there's a Sarah club you can join (they include Saras as well)? They have parties and everything to celebrate the unique joy that it is being a Sara/h.

My name is fairly uncommon outside Scotland but the Irish spelling has seen a surge in popularity due to a certain Disney film.

My daughter has a fairly common name but haven’t met any her age it’s popularity has dropped loads though friends have used other girls names that were on our list.

My friend has an Ella and a Ruby who are 19 and 18 respectively.

She’s mildly gutted!

One of my children's names hasn't soared in numbers but has become very trendy for soap, underwear, etc and is now a VERY popular dogs name too. Not pleased.

I went to school - especially once at High School - there were several girls called:

Lisa
Linzi/Lynsey/Lyndsay (and more spellings)
Emma
Michelle
Gilliam/Jillian
Amy/Aimeé
Claire/Clare
Fiona

I always wanted to call my future daughter Freya. Loved the name for ages and ten years ago it was pretty much unheard off. So fast forward ten years and when I finally had my daughter it was a no brainer. Only I didn't know how popular it became. There were at least 3 other Freya's at baby clinic. Saying that we still occasionally get that's an unusual name comments. Also wanted Isla when I was pregnant with my second girl but went with Iris in the end after my absolute favourite Iris Apfel 😊

Yeah Freya has exploded in popularity. The only teen Freya’s I know are both from N Scotland and one is the daughter of someone who digs up Vikings for a living.

My DC’s names have bounced in popularity all of a sudden. I think I’ve given DD the “Ava” equivalent and DS the “Elliot” equivalent and they’ll be ten a penny by 2022 😬

Ps:, thanks to @ScottishDiblet for the first laugh of the day

PLAY ED SHEERAN! 😅

We thought we were being boring and traditional with both our boys and that there would be loads of them. Turns out everyone else went for 'interesting' and at DS1s school he is the only child out of 500 with his name.
So far we have only met one other child with DS2's name but that was a girl using the same shortened version.

I don't know anyone with my name, was never at school/university/worked with anyone with it either.
It's not even that outlandish, everyone's heard of it, just no-one chooses it.

The only children I know with my DC's names are other MNers. Not met many in rl- once someone called out in the Science Museum my DD's name, and we met another one

Dd1 has a name that is not that unusual but not common, when we named her I'd only ever met one other. She is now one of 2 in her class.

Dd2 has a name that I'd never heard of in real life (it's from a tv show). After she was born we discovered there is another one in our town with the same surname!

Penelope What's her name? Baylis? Harding, perhaps? Lush? Dove?

Margot was always a favorite of mine...

I checked out the ONS names list for the UK each year I had a baby.

I only considered names outside the top 1000.

Before you think a name is ‘wacky’ to be outside the top 1000 in popularity, consider that these are all outside the top 1000 for last year:

Barbara
Gemma
Hetty
Carolina
Catrin
Anne
Teresa
Viola
Celia

Carlo
Duncan
Jon
Karl
Quentin
Ricky
Craig
Lucius
Terry

The name Sandy for a girl s outside the top 3,500, and Jeffery for a boy is outside the top 3,000. For example. Not all my style of names, but people assume unpopular equals unknown or wacky, but it’s not always so.

I just can't ever look at or hear the the name Margot without seeing 'Maggot'

Contrary to what TossDaly said, I don't know anyone else with my name and I was the only one in a school of 1500 kids. I'm sure my kids names must be in the top 50, one is often top ten, but dd was the only one in a school of 60 and DS one of only 2.

32 years ago we chose a very unusual name for DS1. Now it seems there’s a Joshua in every home in the land .

We have 6 kids & I'm a secondary school teacher so I took a looooooong time researching each one as I wanted names for my kids that I'd never taught. So far so good & I've never had any children with my kiddos' names in any of my classes in 14 years. 5 of the 6 names are well outside the top 100 & the other one just squeezed in at 100 this year. A few friends of friends & acquaintances have used a couple of our names, which is mildly annoying...but fair enough - we didn't patent them!

Lily
Ruby
Amy
Olivia
Sophie
Jessica
Alfie
Archie
Oliver
Morgan

Yes, there were no Florences in 1996. I purposely chose a name not in the top 100. Then David Cameron had one. Now it's in the top 20. I'm not happy!

purpletraiter, I like your thinking. My son has a name that was about number 300 the year he was born.

There are girls names like Jillian and Melanie and Valerie which are not fashionable but have a pretty sound (I think).