Why do the mumsnet community hate popular names?

[YourAmberFawn]

Hi everyone,

Maybe a little rant… but I am genuinely curious.
I see a lot of hate on here for names for being popular
Names such as Margot, Jude, Sophia, Luca, e.x.t
While I understand being wary of a popular name, I personally think there’s a difference between popular and trendy - and most of these names have stood the test of time! A lot of the time a name is popular because it is a good name!!
I was wondering why a lot of you dislike popular names? But on the same hand, dislike any new and usual name and brand them impractical?

How high / low in the top 100 would your ideal baby name be?

It’s not a choice of Eve or Moon Unit. There are lots of perfectly nice normal names that are underused as so many pick the same few names.

Off top of head Mary / Susannah / Miranda / Hester would make a change from Eve and Isabel.

My DD (young adult) has a name that was unusual when she was born but was just in the top 100 and is now popular (top 10/20 most years). My DS's name is a classic name that was always in top 10, but now has dropped drown.
Ultimately a name that 'feels' right is still the best choice, who knows how popularity goes. Today's never-in-the-top-hundred can become tomorrow's highest riser!
Having said that I'm not keen on 'unique' names, e.g. that sound like the name of a brand or a drink.

We hate ALL the names @YourAmberFawn.👹

I think there are two things going on.

There are the nice names that are popular now, which you might warn someone off because (a) who wants to be one of five in the class, and (b) if it's a recently popular name it may lose its popularity for babies in a few years and in 30 years time your age will be instantly dateable. But still nice names.

And, perhaps more subjectively, there are the awful (to you) names that would be awful if they were unique and are still awful when there are five in the class, and it's depressing to think of lots of people liking them so you may be extra hostile because of that.

I think a popular name is often because it is a well liked name - which I don’t see as negative.

How can it be good if a name becomes super fashionable? Firstly it loses its ability to identify and secondly it inevitably falls out of fashion and becomes dated.

So yes, many see it as a negative

As you say, there’s a difference between popular (which includes timeless names) and trendy (where you might veer into yoonique spellings and non-names, but also lovely names that for whatever reason have become popular all of a sudden).

I’m pretty glad I wasn’t on MN when we were choosing a name for DD, hers is regularly derided on here.

(It’s etc not e.x.t. 😀)

Also there is a lot more name variety now, so even even you pick one in the top 10, there are unlikely to be several in one class, like there would have been in the 90's.
I keep readng this on here, but I don't think it is true.
The sort of environment you are in will make the name more numerous in your area. For example, Muhammad is the most popular name, but some areas won't have any, but they might have 3 Arlos or 2 Milos in a class.

There is more variety now but if you had a class where the names were ones like Isla, Lila, Lily, Layla, Lara, Lyra, Luna, Lola, Sophia, Sofia, Bella, Ella, Ellie, Evie, Eva, Ava, Ivy the variety isn't obvious.

Is it really that different from a class with multiples of Jack, Oliver,Harry Josh, Ben or Emily, Molly etc?

I agree that there's nothing wrong with popular names, but two of your examples are really bad.

Margot and Luca are the epitome of trendy names. Margot is ranked #44 and only entered the charts 14 years ago. It's had an astronomical rise. There are over 20 times as many margots now as there were 10 years ago. Luca is less extreme, and was always slightly popular, but has had a pretty steep rise - there are over 10 times as many born now as 20 years ago.

Names that rise fast tend to also fall reasonably fast. In 50 years, if you get a job application from a Luca or a Margot, you'll be able to age them pretty accurately.

I’ve always found that the majority like popular names? Charlotte, Oliver, Anna, James, etc. A lot of the time people come across a bit xenophobic, “don’t call them that, they will be constantly having to spell/pronounce it”, when it’s a common non-UK name (or even if it’s uncommon, other people’s inability to want to try and pronounce your name properly says more about them than the parent who named them. Our office has a wide range of names and nobody has difficulty pronouncing them.

When DD started school, her classmates parents were all half horrified and half amused at all the duplicate names. In 3 form entry each class had multiple Millies, Ameilias and Jasmine's and Olivers.
I'm not sure what caused it, but it's a thing. I went to school with a million Rebecca's and Nicolas. And there were 4 Michael's in my brothers class. Fashion wins out.

I just think the new parents coming through now seem to have an obsession with creating bonkers names, or using "normal" names and mis-spelling them.

To the point that the traditional names like Charlotte, Thomas, Daniel, Jessica, Peter, Elizabeth are the more "rare" names in a class of 30.

We are not the Borg

Our office has a wide range of names and nobody has difficulty pronouncing them.

@Fagli , mine too, but the pronunciations people think are correct vary a lot.
Some of the names are pretty much unpronounceable if you don't speak the language.
Examples, Gerda, Tzah, Ahmetovic, Eleni, Aliczia, Olena

Sorry, meant to clear quote.
Eleni is the odd one out because it should be easy but it gets said in several ways.
The others, I've been corrected when I tried to say the name properly, always by an English monoglot.

I wouldn’t choose a very popular name because I have a very dull name that was so popular in the 50s and 60s that I once worked in a team of 20 where five of us had the same name. I’d never put a child through that.

My DS is a Jude and we only knew of one much older (and male so not short for Judith) when we chose it

Surely the whole point of having a name is that it is an identifier? So why would you chose one that could mean when your child is at school or work they end up being Ava S, because there are 4 other Ava’s already.
I think if you love a name and it’s super popular that’s obviously fine and your choice to use it anyway, but there are so many names out there why choose from the top 5.
Lots of people also choose from the top 10 names and then seem baffled when their child is not the only one with name at school/clubs etc.

Because there are a disproportionate amount of snobs on MN.

It does tend to suggest a lack of imagination.

I can’t believe people are still using Olivia in 2025. Lovely name but it’s been absolutely done to death.

There is a difference between using a name that has always been well used eg Charlotte, Thomas and using names that appear from nowhere, often celebrity driven eg Sienna, Mila

My pet hate phrase on here, which people use so often to warn others off picking a statistically popular name is "he/she will likely be one of 3/4/5 (etc) in their class" 🙄

People remember all the kids called Sarah, Laura, Amy etc when they were at school, and assume it's the same now. It's really not. People choose from a much wider pool of names these days, with so many going out of their way to be different. The days of 3 in a class are all but gone. Of course, you'll always have someone pipe up with "well actually there are 5 kids called Noah in my son's class so it does happen". How true these claims are, only those people genuinely know, but even if it is true those stories are very few and far between in 'real life' (basically, don't believe everything you read on the internet).

Olivia was the number 1 girls name in England and Wales in 2023 with less than 3,000 registrations. That number would have barely got it in the top 20 in the 90s. Chloe was getting nearly 10,000 registrations per year back then!

According to Google, there are nearly 18,000 primary schools in England and Wales. Yet mumsnet will have you believe that all 2906 babies called Olivia in England and Wales in 2023 will go to the same one 🙄. In reality, they have more chance of being the only one in their year (maybe even in the school) than they have of being one of many in the class.

I’m so confused when people say MN is middle class. All I see is the majority only buying clothes second hand, shopping at Lidl or Aldi, balking at shopping at Waitrose and hating on SUVs. Lots of advice about what benefits people are entitled to and everyone seems to have not gone abroad for the past 6 years because they can’t afford to

I think it is quite a big deal, though. My name was number 4 when I was born. I was one of 8 in my school class, and life continued like that, really. I’ve always had to use the first couple of letters of my surname; or been “little XXX” or “blonde XXX”, etc.

It’s rubbish. It’s rubbish always being one of many.

I named my children less common names. I didn’t totally dismiss the top 100 but anything above the top 20 made me a bit wary. They’ve got names that are strong and suit them, and they’re not made up or unheard of, but they’ll hopefully only risk one other child with the same name in their class, if they’re unlucky enough to not be the only one.

Having a really popular name is a lifelong pain in the backside. I'm always being muddled up for others.

There is a large proportion of the MN population whose sole purpose in life appears to be as contrary as possible, and if you told them something was black they would argue that it was white. So if a name is popular - i.e. meaning that a lot of people like it - then they have to say it's awful, just for the sake of it. As a pp said, they also like to think they are 'superior' to the rest of us.

@BoleynMemories13 , I pp about that.

I have an unusual name but when I worked for one company, I was getting mixed up with the other Eman, and I think it was because I was just Eman, unlike the Sarahs and the like who would always be Sarah Surname.

@NattyTurtle59 , that's not true. Do you have any idea how snobbish you sound?

If you look at the information Mumsnet provide to people they sell advertising to, they know who their users are and they are more middle class than the average person. This doesn’t mean that there are no WC people on the site, just that there are fewer than in the general population.
Buying clothes secondhand is a middle class marker anyway, and the middle classes have been shopping at aldi and lidl for a long time. I wouldn’t have thought that an SUV was very MC either.