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!

Olivia is a good choice in that the person can personalize it to suit how they feel: Livvy, Liv, Ollie.

It must be good being Penny Mordaunt - in one sense - having a pretty, old-fashioned and relatively unusual name, but one which can be very formal - 'Penelope' and an interesting story to her naming ( after a ship) which resonates with her own values. It always adds benefit to get in a bit of meaning.
I think cool names are ones which sound old-fashioned, or a bit odd, but which actually, when being used, begin to sound really good. Dougal is a perfect example of cool. Cinderella would be a brilliant name to choose: everyone loves the story and it actually has a lovely ring and rhythm to it.

I named my child the number 1 baby name that year (and several other years for that matter) I chose it before it was popular, a relative had that name and I always loved it. We decided to still go with it. When she started school I was dreading there being 30 in the school but in a school of 240 she is still the only one a few years in. Clearly not as popular as we thought! Our son was the same, it was the only name we agreed on, I think there's 3 in the school including him, it's fine and I still love the name so it doesn't matter. Our other child I thought I'd picked something less popular but even that is now top 5! Oh well it doesn't matter.

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

Amelia saw a massive spike from a very low level to become THE most popular girls name in 2013! Since then it's dropping sharply out of fashion again....

I had four Niamh's in my primary school class and 3 in secondary school and two Olivia's. Never met a Freya though x

One class I taught had 5 bens in the same tutor group. I forget all their nicknames, but between them was tall Ben, ginger Ben and thick Ben. The other kids even used to call it to his face. He answered to it as well.

Yes, at work we have 4 Clare's....

We sometimes forget why we name a person - to easily identify them!

My name is super popular and I was always my name-first letter of surname through school and hated it. But if you love a name it doesn’t matter, it hasn’t caused my any actual hardship in life.

Pick a name you love and use it. For me and dh we didn't want top 25 names not due to the frankly rather annoying my child is overly precious suggested above. Because dh has a name that always meant he was MrEnko A. And he disliked it. I have a name i in 52 years have yet to meet another off. I know of 1 other but never met her. If I put my name into Facebook search mostly men comes up (it's unisex) I like it's not a name that are many other off and I have never minded spelling it to anyone.

We have 4 children. Dd1. Gor a name that has shot up into tue mid 20s since she was born. I still like her name but I did mins a lot in reception and year 1 when everything was signed with her initial including stuff for her grandparents. And it took us a long time to teach her her name was not to be spelled with her surname initial.

Dd2 and 3 and ds have names much lower in popularity. I've never met another called by dd2s name. Hers is in 2000th. I've met 1 other called ds name he said at age 36 our son was the first he had met called it. Its in the 1500th for boys. And dd3 is around 250 I've met 1 other.

They do not have over the top unusual names they are

Phoebe. Popular yes
Eloisa
Conrad
Aoife.

Names people recognise and know just not names there are loads of others off for the younger 3. Dd1 was born the year friends exploded in the UK had we known we woild have likely called her the 2nd choice of Daphne. However she suits Phoebe and likes it as a name.

There is however a HUGE middle ground between the top 20 and the unique destiny names and some of us are more comfortable in that range.. not because we feel our children are more special than the Oliver and Olivias. But because that's the style of names we prefer.

In the 1960s, film and TV were not as pervasive, I expect, so Susan George, Jacqueline Kennedy, Michelle ( as in the Beatles song) , Jane Birkin, had an effect on choice, without these names seeming over-saturated. They were popular because of the actresses. . Twenty years later, Kayleigh is popular, after Marillion's song, but Diana, didn't make an impact - perhaps, because the name was too well-known. Jessica the baby in 'Some Mother's Do Have 'Em'. People got to hear about it, but it wasn't THE most household name.

Today, Ava isn't a popular because of a star: Mylene Class popularised the choice, I think. We like names that are not hugely everywhere. Ariana isn't that popular, nor Rihanna

Cinderella would be a brilliant name to choose: everyone loves the story and it actually has a lovely ring and rhythm to it.

Oh I think that would be a millstone of a name.

Top 10 names now are given to much lower proportion of babies than they were in previous decades.

Rather than looking at rank of the name or number of babies given that name in a year, IMO the most important stay to look at (if popularity is important to you) is proportion of babies given that name. You can easily get this on the name websites. A popular girls name with a proportion of 0.02 for example means only 1 in 50 baby girls was given that name. Given the average school class might have 15 girls, chances are there won't be one with that name in it.

FWIW in my son's nursery class there are several multiples of unusual names (outside top 100) but not many children with top 10 names.

I purposely avoided any 'top 20' names for that reason. I didn't want my kid to called something totally daft, but neither did I want him to be one of four kids in the class with the same name (as my husband was.)

There's tons of good names out there....

FWIW in my son's nursery class there are several multiples of unusual names

Well, they're not that unusual then...!

You can see the number of babies given each name every year (if given to at least 3 babies I think).

My dc's name was given about 15 times in their birth year - we've not come across another yet!

While less popular names can be found in the same classroom (and name trends do tend to be localised, so that's not too much of a surprise) there's still a difference between that and being given a very popular name. When I grew up there was another Toast at my school, another Toast at dance class, another Toast in my university tutor group... It wasn't until I started work that I was the only one with my name. I know the parents of a young Balthazar, who actually has another Balthazar in his school, which is unexpected but hardly the same situation as Jack or Oliver. With fewer than a dozen with his name born this year, he's unlikely to run across Balthazars in any situation. One issue with people saying that there are several unusual names in a nursery class is that there isn't an agreed on definition for unusual. One poster gave Jasper as an example, and while I don't think that's a very popular name, it's still much too popular for me to consider using, and I wouldn't describe it as unusual.

The top ten names in England and Wales were given to 24% of boys and 19% of girls in 1996 and that's dropped to 11% of boys and 8% of girls in 2020. That's a significant drop, but still a high enough number for me to want to avoid the top ten. Probably also combined with the fact that I'm interested enough in names to track how name popularity has changed over time that the very popular names just feel overdone and tired to me.

I wouldn’t get too obsessive about it as names can rocket in popularity. Or by chance you’ll get multiple children with unusual names in a class.

Giving your child a name that you love (and think they will) is the most important thing. But for me, I didn't personally want to use anything in the top 50.

In all fairness, in Victorian times, in England, working class women may have been have been called by their surnames - if in service, and in most areas of life, people were Mr or Mrs X ( ridiculously between husband and wife, in Pride and Prejudice). The name - Catherine, Mary, Elizabeth, was just a way of virtue signalling that you had a Christian faith. Names were shortened more, when among intimates, , if Thomas Hardy novels are correct - and shortened or made nick names to things which didn't always sound like the name: 'Peg' and Margaret?? So, you didn't have to get stuck with a birth name.

If you were royal or aristocratic, you'd be 'My Lady' and maybe a nick name. In Agatha Christie novels, 1930s characters are Egg, Bunty, Tuppence and all that.

DD has a really popular name, was top 10 before she was born, still in the top 10 now, she’s 13. We weren’t aware at the time, we didn’t know many children and it didn’t occur to either of us to look at the statistics. We only had 3 criteria for a name: needed to sound good in both English and my language, my grandmother needed to be able to pronounce it and we both needed to like it.

She likes her name, she had a short lived phase when she was about 8 when she wanted to be called Samantha but she’s changed her mind since When she went up to secondary school, I asked her if she wanted to go by anything else, a nickname or her middle name and she said no - funnily enough, her best friend’s name is her middle name, only just in the top 1000…

To be fair though nowadays people also want names that work internationally. There are so many multicultural families and people don't want names that are difficult to pronounce (for example Phoebe would be one of these names if it wasn't for Friends). Amelia, Olivia, Freya, Lily etc. are all easily understood everywhere.

It’s not like 30 years ago where there really was a top 20 set of names and anything else was unusual. The top 50-100 are all much closer in number so you could have 3 in the same class or none at all depending on what school your child is at.

You have to love the name and say it all the time. So I really wouldn’t worry about it.

I think it depends where you live. In the school where my children are in London English names are few and far between so it really isn't an issue. Mine have popular names for the year they were born and yet I haven't come across another of either in any baby group, nursery or in reception. I was surprised but when I thought about it it makes sense. It's a very international area.

@pinklavenders sorry, I meant they are unusual at a national level. For one of the names, very few children were given that name in England in 2020 (less than 20) but of that very small number 2 are in the same nursery class. (It's a much more common name in Scotland, where I'm from and a name I considered but ruled out as I thought it was too unusual!). There are 3 Otis in the class (which is just in the top 100, nowhere near a top 10 name currently). Conversely there are no Jacks, Harrys, Olivers etc.

I named my dd the top name of the year she was born-and only ever met one other of her name,her whole life (random but it was in pret-she served me)

my son-I called him a name that wasn’t in the top ten,had never met anyone with his name and within the year,ten more boys where born with his name
6 of which where in his class and I’ve met loads of (now) men with his name
id genuinely never met one until I gave birth to him

my youngest dds name-knew of an old lady with the name which seemed really odd on an older lady-wrong generation but I had her and there where two more at nursery

odd thing was,when I was pregnant with her-within 18 months,28 women at the school the kids went to got pregnant
all but one where girls
all the girls apart from mine and my mates dd where called ruby-it seemed to be the name for that year even though it wasn’t anywhere near the top 20
oddly I work with 5 rubys now-all born around that time

I have a top 10 name for my birth year. There were 5 of us in one class, there’s only so many common nicknames and then you end up with surnames or cruel nicknames. I wouldn’t inflict it on my child despite loving some of the current top 20 names.
It doesn’t get any better after school - I’ve frequently worked with people with the same name, there’s a lot of ‘oh which X do you mean’ when people refer to us, and I can guess the age of every one of them within about 2-3 years!

my son-I called him a name that wasn’t in the top ten,had never met anyone with his name and within the year,ten more boys where born with his name* 6 of which where in his class*

Wow, that's a lot of boys with the same name in one class! The name was probably already in the top 100 and rising rapidly....!

To avoid this happening, it's worth looking at names outside the top 100 and avoiding names that are rising quickly in popularity.

DD1 has a top 10 name. In 5 Primary schools, 2 nurseries and a range of extra curricular activities she has met one other. Indeed at two Primary schools she was the only one in the whole school.

Her sister, whose name isn't even top 500... has met several others.