Is name Theo too popular?

[Carmelova85]

I love name Theo/Theodore but worried that is too popular. I’m FTM, no exposure to any other young kids, nursery or school so it’s hard to say if it’s really so popular in my area.

What is your experience with this name? Do you know a lot of Theo’s?

No name is too popular if you like it enough

It's a lovely name but it is very popular choice in the British expat community I live in (off the top of my head, I know of 4 born within the last year or so)

I think it's the new 'Leo' (my 4yr old is a Leo!)

@Whatsyourflava thank you! Great idea

Never met a human theo/theodore but know lots of dogs called that

I know two, both in their early teens. One is a Theodore and the other is just Theo.

My 16 year old was very nearly a Theo(dore). In our area (London) that was right at the start of the upswing - we met lots over the next few years although interestingly neither of my children have had any in their school years. The youngest Theo I know in our area now is 7. It definitely seems to have peaked and is well on the way down again around here.

I know loads of toddler Theos. I’m in the SW though.

I know one Theo who is around 5. There are none in my 5 year old son's year group of 60.

I only know DS! I know of a DC younger than him who was kind of named after him (his sibling was at the same nursery stage and suggested it for his new brother apparently ). And I've met one Thea. I do love it and it has a beautiful meaning (brave leader). Mind you I'm in Scotland and it's maybe seen as quite an English name?

So I had a pretty wild night in on the ONS website looking at all the baby names info for 2019 (FTM to be in the same situation!) and if you go on the geographic area section you can download the data for baby names by area for the top 100 names. So basically you’ll be able to see exactly how many Theo’s were named in your area last year :)
I think it’s a cute name btw!

I think your issue is not so much how popular it is, it's how quickly it has risen in popularity in recent years, so people will tend to associate it with being born in a certain period of time. I know several Theos, but it's a perfectly pleasant name.

Do you have any other options to consider?

@diddlediddle I also like Max, but my husband is not 100% convinced. His second option is Sebastian, but I don’t like Seb.

The only other concern is that this baby’s older half brother is called Leo. He doesn’t live in the UK and never visits us (my DH goes to visit him every now and then) , but still. I just love the name...

If you both love Theo then you must choose it!

I love the name Theo, I wouldn’t say it was really popular, far more Teddy’s I would say. If you like it use it.

I know a few, they are aged 3 to 6

@LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett, Theodore means God's gift, not brave leader. The Theo part refers to God.

Yes, it is popular, but it is impossible for anyone else to tell you if it's too popular as only you know your criteria for that.

I will just say that to assess the popularity you need to combine the Theos (#16) and the Theodores (#18).

So in 2019 there were

2,729 Theos
2,663 Theodores

The combined total of 5,392 is more than the #1 name, Oliver, with 4.932 births, and shows that the Theo(dore) rankings could be misleading if taken in isolation.

In all likelihood many of the Theodores will go by Teddy in their childhood but there's a good chance they'll use Theo when they are older.

@ZoyaTheDestroyer really interesting stats!
The name Ollie is number 85 in the charts (and Olly also just outside the top 300) with over 800 babies with those names in 2019, so these kind of comparisons are tricky as including those figures would push Oliver/Ollie above Theodore/Theo

I don’t intend to suggest that Theo is more popular than Ollie / Olly and I certainly don’t present the figures as a serious attempt at a proper combined spellings dataset (there’s a reason the British Baby Names blog hasn’t done one since 2016). Just a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation to show that although it might feel like a name at #16 or #18 isn’t that popular, the concentration of boys’ names is so heavily weighted to the top 25 or so that there are comparatively small intervals between the names.

I think it's a lovely name! But my stepdad and DP would say Feo (nothing accent related, he's from SW London) so we can't use it. The same with Martha.
Check how your family pronounce th sounds and that this doesn't irritate you!

@gretagreengrapes

I think it's a lovely name! But my stepdad and DP would say Feo (nothing accent related, he's from SW London) so we can't use it. The same with Martha. Check how your family pronounce th sounds and that this doesn't irritate you!

I have a Theo and a Martha. I really like names with the "th" sound. You're right some people make it a "F" sound.

I live in New Malden and I know one Theo ! It’s a lovely name !

I love the name but I’d say it’s the most common toddler name I know. I can think of 3 x Theo, 2 x Theodore. I also know 2 x Teddy (but not short for Theodore).

It is lovely though and that’s why it’s popular!

Love the name but it is very common where I live - loads of them! We looked on here and between those officially named Theo and those named Theodore there were a lot of them names.darkgreener.com/

I have a 9yo Theo. There is one other in his class and both have the same last initial.