Did you google the name you chose?

[CadyEastman]

There's a Taylor Swift in DD's year. That's fine but it's a boy and he does tend to get a bit of stick.

The thing is Taylor Swift the artist had her first hit the year before he was born so a quick google would have told them that their new baby might share its name with a pop star.

No idea if the parents are happy with their choice, they probably are as they didn't change it, but it did get me wondering how many people do an internet search on the names they're thinking of using?

But noone could have known she would become a household name.

No probably not but that's not really the point of the thread

I’ve looked the names up on social media to see how popular the sets Of names are.
does that count?

Pretty much stuff. I think I did similar with my two

Yes. One was a murderer but very obscure so it didn’t bother me.

We used an unusual Welsh name. Googled it and nothing obvious came up. Six months after DS was born, someone with that name became very high-profile on a TV talent show, and we spent the next year or so saying 'No, that's not why we chose the name...' Fortunately he was much less high-profile by the time DS started school but it was quite irritating for a while! It did get us free drinks once though when we randomly happened to call into the famous namesake's local on the way home from a daytrip when DS was a toddler and the barman asked him his name 😄

Our surname is very unusual, so I’ve been googling potential names for first DC as we don’t want them to be the only person with their name globally.

Free drinks is always a win

Yes I did! And it sounds weird but I loved seeing it typed up, it made him a real person, and yes I looked to see what others with his name looked like 😂

I didn't check surname and first name, what's bad if you can't find anyone else with their name??

I did actually check after and it was sad. DS has a mosaic condition, and when I searched first and surname, the first posts were an obituary to a baby with the same name and the full version of the condition, who'd died in infancy six years earlier.

My name is that of a very barely known actress

I'm a famous swimmer (not very famous but that's what comes up on google). DS1 is a footballer (like division one or something and now retired) and DS2 is random Linked in profiles.
I did check while I was pregnant to make sure they weren't mass murderers or porn stars.

I am loving the idea of a boy Taylor Swift.

Yes, but nothing came up barring some ancient saint or other in a niche somewhere.

Bizarrely, I share my fairly unusual name with someone in Oz who does the same sort of job. Clients occasionally tell me they've googled me and are surprised by where I live. Sometimes I enlighten them.

We didn't have Google in 1987 .... I thought about how names would look on a Christmas card, as a judge etc. Thought about how the initials looked too.

Didn't occur to me to google for my eldest, she was born in 2007 so googling was still very much a boot up the PC and make an effort kind of thing (no access to google on work machines!). Wish I had, her name has been in the top 10 for pretty much the whole century so far, we didn't know anyone with the name at all and we loved it...now she's one of so many!

Didn't bother googling the youngest at the time, it's a fairly unusual Welsh name but not so uncommon it's unheard of. Googled recently and all of the hits are for seriously professional women, leading scientists, academics, doctors etc. Hopefully that's a sign that youngest will achieve great things in her pursuit of a good life.

I did to make sure they were held by a diverse range of ages, nationalities etc.

No, we didn't. We have a pretty unusual surname so I wasn't too worried about it. Although now I know of an actress with the same name as my DSIL so perhaps I shouldn't have been so confident.

DH is the only one (at least on Google) with his name globally, which means he feels it’s difficult to have any sort of anonymity I guess. So work colleagues / clients can Google him and see the newspaper article about his GSCE results, the house he was on the electoral roll on when he was at uni. His dad and siblings also have unusual first name combos with an unusual surname, so you can find the family home address easily as that’s where his Dad is listed as a director at Companies House, and you can find the articles from when SiL dated a reality star in the early 00s and ended up papped in the Daily Mirror or the like, and BiL’s wedding registry etc. We just want our DC to be more difficult to find out about I guess.

I don't think google was around then , no I know it wasn't . Just two favourite names from books .

No. And turns out this name was a well known character in a tv soap - and not in a good way 🤣

It is probably worth doing, but not essential. Unfortunately there is a risk that any name will be the next Alexa or Taylor Swift. If I googled it and a minor celebrity who I’d never heard of came up I probably wouldn’t care, but of course they could alway become the next Taylor Swift! Poor kid though.

There was no point googling ds name as I would be surprised if there was anyone else with his first and last name together

I googled DH's favourite name and saw it was same Firstname Lastname as a particularly masculine male rockstar.

My favourite was universally feminine and closest match was a kickass comicbook superhero.

After a long labour I forgot everything and DD ended up with the rockstar name. C'est la vie.