Really popular names

[DeeDeeDaisy]

What is your opinion on super popular names? I'm talking top 10...Olivia, Amelia, Ava, Freya etc.

Some of the only names we can agree on for our baby girl are super popular but I don't know how I feel about that! Just curious to see what others think.

My partner had a popular name growing up and said it never bothered him. I was the only one of my name at primary school and didn't meet another one until secondary - I always wanted to meet another person with the same name as me, weirdly!

I think it can lack imagination a bit, but then I have only this evening discovered that Evelyn and all Eve-type names are wildly popular (been out of the baby naming game a while).

I really dislike the meaning of Amelia, really surprised it is more popular than Emilia.

I was at a y6 leavers event recently and there was not one, but two Penelopes in the same class, which really surprised me. I suppose you never can tell what will be regionally popular, regardless of the stats.

I think that high popularity can dampen the beauty of a name because it begins to sound like a record played too much. People tend to say it with emphasis and a patter, rather than with care.

. If you can possibly build in some options, it's probably better to do so. A name is good if it can sound formal - or be shortened or personalised.

The big name from my youth was Tracey. It's a beautiful name and popularised in a James Bond movie I believe - short for Thereza. It is often pronounced with too much stress and drag, and not lightly and melodically..

Out of touch here, our eldest is 27. Surprised to see Olivia and Freya/Freja still in the top 10, there were two of each in her then reception class (14 girls).
Classic names I guess. They don’t date.

My name has been in the top 10 for pretty much my whole life.
I have only met two other girls with my name, I was the only one in my big primary school and the only one in my massive secondary school.

There were however 3 girls called Araminta in my year at secondary (Araminta, Minty and Mento)
Along with 12 boys called Oliver (all Oli/Olly/Ollie/ with initials and one poor lad who was just Liver)
Its random, there may be multiple there may be none, pick a name you like.
I would much rather be Freya S than the only poor kid called Gladys just to be 'original'

Both my boys' names are in the top 10. Mine's really unusual and i wanted them to have boring names they didn't constantly have to spell.
If you like them then use them- they're popular for a reason.

Honestly, name them whatever name you love. I had my son in 2018 when the number 2 name was Noah. I named him Noah and in all the baby classes I attended (a lot) and during his entire year at preschool so far there has not been another Noah, might be hard to believe but we’ve never crossed paths with another little Noah! It suits him totally and I still absolutely love the name! No regrets here!

Pick a top 10 name if you want one of those names. It's your child!

I personally find a lot of the top names completely dull and find it a bit bemusing that a parent has 9+ months to choose a name and opts for a name that the majority of the population have also chosen. I'm not saying a child has to have a unique name, but "variety is the spice of life" and all that jazz...

i prefer slightly more unusual, but the top names are nice because they are nice; and they will fit in well with their peers. Pros and cons!

The question is WHY you love it it though. Basically people love popular names BECAUSE they're popular even though everyone says it's despite it. Think about it - when everyone was being called Louise, Kelly, Joanne, Sarah in the 80s all those parents just "happened" to love those names. But now, no one loves them. And now everyone just happens to love Amelia/Olivia/Ava and newcomers like Lyla/Lyra/Luna etc.

So, if you choose it just be aware that you only like it because everyone else does too. And it's not an original thought. And that's fine isn't it.

I do like the lot of the popular names and a few of them were on our shortlist. I have a popular name from my generation and althoughive always liked it, I hated that there was always a few of us with the same name in my year or class. In secondary school there was 3 of us in the same art class. We settled on a more unusual name for dd in the end. It's not weird, or out there, but just not very common. In my whole life I've only ever met one other person with the same name as dd.

Personally I wouldn't. I had a popular name growing up and I didn't like having to be Toast X in every single situation and want my children to have names which are less popular. That said, the percentage of babies given the top ten names has over halved since 1996, so you are less likely to have several children with the same name in a classroom - though name trends are highly localised.

Ugh! Not only are they saccharine and drab but so thoughtless and plain! I've no idea why people want to pass their kids through life with bang average, everywhere-you-turn kind of names.

This.

Overused names will quickly sound dated!

And who wants to be constantly having to add their surname to identify themselves?

they're popular for a reason.

And what reason is that?!

@pinklavenders because they’re nice names. There is a reason not many people want to call their child Honeywillow or Tarquin.

they're popular for a reason

This comes up a lot, and the implied reason is always that they’re especially beautiful, classic names - but back in the 1960s, for example, the top 5 girl’s names were:

Susan
Julie
Karen
Jacqueline
Deborah

You’d be hard pushed nowadays to find anyone arguing that those names were objectively more beautiful or timeless than Olivia, Amelia, Sophia et al, and yet they were all hugely popular at the time, and most likely will be again in another 30/40 years. So it can’t be that currently popular names are somehow intrinsically ‘better’ than others - a lot of it just has to do with the prevailing fashion of the time, with popular opinion influencing people’s choices and people tending to like names that they hear around them a lot.

Honestly my gut reaction is that's a shame'. I don't have such a reaction to boring but timeless names like Charlotte, Lucy, Annabelle etc so my advice is to for one of those that won't date her.

Popular names are less popular now.

In 1996, 1% of babies were called Jessica (and that ranked 3rd - I’m still trying to work out what was first), whereas in 2020 0.6% of babies were called Olivia (ranked first). Some names have to rank higher than others, that’s just how basic maths works.

In absolute terms, there were 3640 Olivia’s born last year and 6711 Jessica’s born in 1996. Now of course, how often you see a name will need to take into consideration how long it is popular for, but that would require some serious mathematical modelling.

@TempsPerdu it was me that said they’re popular for a reason; the reason being they’re nice names. I didn’t claim they’re classic as they aren’t. But they tend to be nice names. Just like the ones you posted above would’ve been considered the nice names at the time. Every generation has the nice and the horrible names.

Just looked up my own name and it was top 5ish around the time I was born. My best friend has the same name, and I meet the odd one at work. But I couldn’t care less. I don’t feel any less special and it hasn’t impacted my life in anyway.

I’ve cracked it…. Sophie was the most popular name in 1996. 7087 Sophies. Which means you had double the chance of having another Sophie in your year R class in 2000 than an Olivia in your year R class in 2024.

This is a really recent thing to worry about, go back a century, or even a few decades, and there were many children with the same name. If I look at a census from 1881 for instance, on the same page there are multiple people called William, James, John, Mary, Martha etc
In my class at primary school most of us had someone else in our year with the same name, and definitely someone else in the school. My brother and his friend were the only ones with their respective names all through school but they were the exception.
Just choose a name you love, it doesn’t matter if there are two others in the class, or none at all, your child will own that name.
My best friend from school has a popular name for our age group, but I only know one other now, and my friend was the only one I knew until a few years ago. Another good friend from school has a popular name for our generation but she is the only one I have ever known. Both suit their names and the names are lovely.

My daughter is Is one of those names and she was the only one in her year with that name throughout primary. She's now starting high school and has one other with the same name.

I hadn't heard of the name 10 years ago at all until someone mentioned it to me and then growing up in our friendship groups she was the only one called it.

@Louise0701

Yes that’s what I’m getting at - lots of people today think that Olivia is a beautiful name; lots of people in 1930 thought that Doris was a beautiful name. But Olivia isn’t intrinsically ‘better’ than Doris just because Doris is now out of favour; Isla isn’t more beautiful than Susan etc. They just fit in better with the mainstream trends of the time. As you say, our choices are largely dictated by fashion.

People should obviously choose a name they genuinely love, popular or not, but there are thousands of underused names in the world that are just as ‘nice’ as those in the top 10.

it was me that said they’re popular for a reason; the reason being they’re nice names.

But they're not. There's nothing intrinsically nice about them. If there was, then Susan, Doris, Stephen would all be 'nice' today.

They're simply fashionable!

And anything in fashion tends to fall out of fashion and start to sound dated!

But some names repeatedly come back into fashion - William, George, Alice, Amelia...

My Amelia is 13 - no other Amelia at her primary school (3 Amelie's though) and one in her secondary.

My name was unusual - 1 of 2 in the same secondary class.