Names that were unusual when your DCs are born and are now everywhere

[KellyanneConway]

22 years ago I had a beautiful DD, Ella. I knew no one else with that name and I got asked more than once how to spell it! There were no other Ella's in the same school year as my DD all through primary and high school. When my Ella was doing volunteer work in primary schools a couple of years ago, she said it seemed like every other little girl was called Ella.
I still love it though and so does my DD. We like to think we started the trend

Mia mya may.

my 2 best friends are called Michaela and Mikayla, known as Kayla and Kay. Both late 30s. Don’t know any younger.

I'm early 30s. I know a couple of other Michaelas in their 30s/40s but all of the Kaylas I know are under 16. I guess it varies across the country.

@purple I can’t find the live data on the ONS are you able to post a link please? I can only see it by year up to 2017

@Poppyfields21 you can look at name popularity since 1996 in England and Wales from this website. It will tell you the popularity rank, and number of babies registered in each year.

names.darkgreener.com

DD1 is Phoebe she is named after JD Salingers " The Catcher in the rye" DH wanted to name his daughter Phoebe from age 14 when he read this book.. Then friends happened and DD is born the year friends started in the UK.. We spoke of it and decided it wouldnt be too common... it went into the top 100 list and just has got more and more common. The year she was born about 1000 girls were called Phoebe in 2016 almost 2000 girls were named it.. so it has increased a lot....

DD2 has a name that technically has risen more than DD1s has (Phoebe has gone to 24th and was when she was born just inside the top 100) DD2 has gone up 400 in the 18 years she has been alive however in practice that means 14 were called this when she was and in 2016 24 was.. We have never met another with her name. (Eloisa)

DS is Conrad it has gone down in popularity since he was born . We have met 1 other he was the parent of a child in the primary ds attended he said that when we met ours was the first Conrad he had met (he was mid 30s at the time)

DD3 is Aoife and like DD1 this has gone up in popularity. However we were not expecting it like we somewhat were with DD1... we have never met another Aoife but I do know of 1 other as a teacher who left the school (mat leave but never returned) when dd3 was in reception named her dd this name.

Ottilie. Didn’t met another one for decades and now I know of four from local baby groups who have been born in the last couple of years.

My daughter was born in 2016 and I’d never met anyone with her name before. I’ve heard of 3 babies with her name this year!

My DD is called Thea , when I had her in 1991 nobody had heard of the name before. She was always getting called Freya or Fear , I think half the time people thought I had made the name up !! I'm gutted that it is really getting popular now.

I have a Theo(dore). It was a long way outside the top 100 when he was born. "how unusual" said everyone..... and now there are millions!

This is very outing but my name is Bethany. Mum said people looked at her like she had two heads when she named me. Then that character from Coronation Street was named Bethany and there was a huge surge in popularity - mum is still bitter about it . But the popularity died down again very quickly - I don’t know any Bethanys who are not teenagers or older.

There’s probably a lot of interesting analysis you could do about how names that are vaguely popular and seem quite exotic stay with us from when we are children and then we all come to name or children them.

I went to school with an Amelia, Sophia and a Theo and everyone thought their names were very unusual and special.

Then the first people I knew to have children used Isla, Noah etc and I hadn’t heard of anyone else with those names. But now looking back I think it was just because at the time I didn’t know any other young children so assumed the to be rarer than they were because I was comparing with names from the 80s.

at Oliver being unusual 10 years a go though!

I also think when you’re naming your first child, how many babies do you realistically know? Maybe a handful of friends’ children? Unless you’re looking at ONS lists did you really know what was popular?

Then when having your second child you’ll have gone to hundreds of baby groups and playgroups and whatever with baby number 1 and probably your ideas on popular names are different.

I know a 45 year old Chloe. There was no-one with that name when her parents named her. Now it is one of the most popular names around.

Luca. Annoying as it's now a neddy name. Cultural appropriation and all that.

A colleague was pregnant 20 years ago and named her DS Noah everyone was wtf the rest is history

Not quite the same but I remember when I was 16 (so about 14 or so years ago), I did work experience in a nursery school. There was a little girl called Isla and I was enchanted by her name - I had never met someone with that name before! Now it's so popular.

My son is 32 and called Jack. I had loads of comments at the time about it being a "grandad" name, but it's everywhere now.

Both my DD's names seem to be popular on here, they get mentioned on many "girls name" threads.

Oldest DD's name was outside of top 100 a few years back but it leaps up each year. Baby DD name is still outside of top 100 but I expect it to get more popular.

Names outside the top 100 are not unusual or uncommon names though. They really aren’t. There are still several hundred kids being given those names a year. Names in the top 100-250 are names that pretty much everyone has heard of, but might not be directly in vogue, might have several spellings or close versions, or be shortenings/derivatives.

Names in the 100-200 bracket in 2016 - Joanna, Rebecca, Amy, Eve, Isabel, Bethany, Lydia, Robert, Jamie, Patrick, Dominic, John, Christopher, Nicholas, Peter, Billy.

I have a teenage niece called Isla...

Another one for Freya. I only chose it because id never heard of it this was 7 years ago. My mum hated it at first now its everywhere.

I knew an Ezra (aged 30 now) and it was a very strange name at the time!

Freya was the 19th most popular girls name seven years ago with 2619 Freyas born. It gets bumped higher in the rankings if you include the other spellings too.

Names that were genuinely unusual seven years ago (outside the top 1,000)

Dawn. Kay. Suzannah. Lorraine. Margot. Teresa. Pauline. Celine. Audrey. Cecily. Agatha. Betty. Elaine. Rosalie. Laurel. Collette. Janet. Cheryl.

More baby girls were named Tiger that year than Carol.

I think it depends a bit where you live, different places go through the popular names at different time, we liked Olivia and didn't know or have heard of any, was totally shocked to learn it's no1 baby girl name in Scotland last year!