Unusual/uniqu names - why?

[seeker]

i really don't understand why people are so keen to give their child a really unusual name. I could understand not choosing the "most popular name of the year", but I am always puzzled by threads that say "We were going to call ds X, but we discovered that someone else in the town has chosen it so we can't now"

My Ds goes to a primary school with 420 pupils
and the only names that duplicate often enough to be at all confusing (ie more than 2) are Emily, Callum, Connor and Jake. Apart from that, there is only one of even the most traditional names - Patrick, John, James, Charlotte - the list of tried and tested spellable, non eyebrow raising, non-pigeonholing, non potentially embarrassing, non dating, non "I hate my parents for doing this to me" names in endless. Why choose Sequoia when Rose, Lily, Daisy and Fleur are available?
Of course in 5 years time the Reception classes of the country will be full of little Sequoias - and it'll all be my fault!

And I can spell unique!

I agree we wanted somthing not as popular as jack ect but not somthing we would regret so we called ds Justin.

It doesn't bother me, exactly. I just don't understand it, and would like someone to explain it to me.

I suppose my view is coloured a bit by my brother's step children, who all have very unusual names, and who all hate them, to the extent that we had a "new name' celebration for the oldest one so that he could go to secondary school with a name that people could spell and which didn't cause people to go "Sorry, didn't quite catch that" every time he said what his name was.

I'm having a chuckle to myself as this has made me think of a girl who i once worked with at a part time job when i was in university - we were talking about what we might call our future children and she said she didn't know what it meant but that she though Obsequious was a really nice name.

I've got a very unusual (old fashioned) name - i hated it at primary school, didn't mind it at high school and quite liked it by the time i was about 17!

Um, is it not you who wants everyone to call their child Clemency? That's pretty unusual IMO.

When I was at school, and even as an adult, there were loads of Sarahs, Helens etc, and I was the only one of me. In my whole life I have only met 2 other people with the same name, and I like that, so will be aiming for similar for my children. Not by using outlandish names, but traditional names that are largely forgotten (dd is Philippa).

Give us a clue, Ara!

Loving Obsequious - a whole new area to explore. Parsimonious? no, too long.

My dn called her kitten System because she loved the word!

I think unusual real names are sometimes lovely - but you do have to be careful. You notice I didn't actually call my dd Clemency - I just want someone else to!

Clue for you too, CantSleepWontSleep?

From you, I mean!

I just can't bring myself to call my children unusual names - Both dh and I love the names Willow and Wolf but I don't think we'll ever use them because they are the sort of names people either love or hate. And I can't risk my own child hating their own name, or hating me for chosing it!

Lol at System! I quite like it!

i think names have always moved in fashions

it is generally only a few years after that a trend emerges so quite often you think that you are choosing something nrelatively unusual but it emerges that it has actually without you knowing become a name that in that decade or five year period a lot of othe rpeople have also started choosing

stanley strikes me as an example currently

i tend to think no onee would choose stanley except to be different but i have been surprised to learn of a fe w stanleys in the last three years

What, to my real name?
My mum was a fan of Bewitched in the 70's.

samantha tabitha eudora

Indeed zippi, although mine is spelled slightly differently.

Ds was nearly Stanley, named after his uncle. But in the end we went for Oliver, and in a school with 90 children per yeargroup he has always been the only one in his year (so far, he is Y4)
Dd is Emily, and again, out of the 90 children in reception she is the only one

I do like the fact there are no others with their names, but not sooo much that I would have opted an eye-brow-raising name in the first place.

what eaudora odora eeeuwdora

On occasions when i have said "no I wouldn't use that name as we know someone with that name" what I mean is not "oh dear my child must have a completely unique name and be the only one in the town"

what i mean is "we already associate that name with someone else's ,and don't really want to reproduce the name"

perhaps other people mean the same, rather than being precious as you seem to feel they are?

with someone else's child

No zippi - I don't even know how to pronounce that. Who was she in Bewitched? Sam's mother?

yes the one who caused mayhem and was bossy mil to darren at least i think he was darren

this programme was actually on in the sixties

it was the first programme i was allowed to stay up until 8 oclock to watch

i loved tabitha at the time she was sweet

and samantha was so pretty lolol