The name I like is top 3?

[Walkietalkie7]

The name we have chosen is the 3rd most popular name in our country for girls.

244 babies with this name were born in our country last year.

People with popular names, is it really so bad and should we choose something else? What about popularity now vs when I was growing up in the 90s? I read that the year I was born Emma was given to 3% of babies and Olivia which is no1 now was given to 1.4% last year.

It's not bad

I don’t understand why people get so caught up on how popular a name is. It’s really unimportant. If you like the name use it

@CabernetAndCocoMelon because names are meant to be identifiers, so if you call someone’s name and 10 heads in the class turn, it doesn’t really do the job.

It’s fine. Remember that 300000 baby girls are born every year. So you’d have to be pretty unlucky to have another one of your chosen name in the school, never mind the class.

There is a reason that popular names are popular - they are generally lovely. Yes -you could call the poor girl Gertrude (no offence to any Gertrude lovers out there but it is rather awful!) and she would be the only one. But it isn’t a very nice name. And I bet the one you like is lovely.

I have the most popular girls name for my year of birth. It was a right pain at school to be one of three “Lizzie’s” in my class. But it wasn’t the worst thing. And name fashions change. As an adult I have a name that is well known but not that common. It is quite fun when I meet another Lizzie as I know they are likely the same age as me! 😂

Thanks @Mumofteenandtween the name we want to use is Freya. But it’s still only 244 babies out of 22k births, around 1%, so I’d hope it wouldn’t be like when I was younger and there were 4 Chloe’s in one class.

Agree with a pp, if you like a name, popularity shouldn’t be a reason not to use it

It's fine except if (like me) you also have a very common surname.

Are you in Scoland, @Walkietalkie7 . It's a popular name in England and Wales (Freya) and has been for decades.
NRS Baby Names shows it to have been in the top 30 in Scotland for nearly 20 years, and top 5 since 2020, so there will be plenty of them around.
Babies First Names 2024 - National Records of Scotland (NRS) shows name popularity by region.

Are there any other names you like?

No of girls born in Scotland in 2024: 22,329

If you really like it then use it - Freya is a lovely name

It might annoy her as a child - I found my popular name very very dull (my mum had no idea it was popular when she chose it), but as an adult I don't care, and helpfully it has stayed quite popular so it isn't an instant age signifier.

My dd's name was number 41 in the charts when I was pregnant. The next year it shot up to the top ten, and it's been hanging around the top 5 ever since (she is now 20). If I'd have known, I would have picked another name. But you know, it has never been a problem for her. She has always been the only one in her class of that name, and its popularity has never bothered her. So go for the name you love. And remember that if a name can shoot up from 41 to 10 in one year, it can drop right back down again.

Yes in Scotland.

Clara and Layla are in our list too.

@Emanwenym its weird because top 3 is popular but it’s still only around 1% of babies born? So I don’t know if it’s the same as popular names when I was younger.

My eldest Son's name had been the number one name in the UK for ten years when he was born (almost 20 years ago). My younger two children both had top five names. It's never been an issue.

My son has a very popular name and there were literally no other boys in his school with the same name until yr 3. He personally doesn’t know another boy with same name.

I have a Freya…she’s the only one in her whole primary school. I know of one other who goes to a club with my youngest. Lovely name.

@Walkietalkie7 , you can't tell whether or not there will be others in the same class. The chances of there being 2 Claras or 2 Laylas in the same class aren't that low. In my class, there were two girls with the same name (just in the top 75 that year).

I do know a lot of Freya / Freyja's but maybe that's just my area - all Freya's, Isla's and Matildas's here.

I don't know if it's of any comfort/help but I'm in Scotland and there's one Freya in my son's nursery class (age 1-2), I haven't met any others around his age.

My son's name is in the top 15 and we've met three others so far, it disappoints me but I still love his name and couldn't imagine him being anything else.

Names ARE meant to identify us. If you have a common first name, at least make sure that you have a more memorable (uncommon) surname.

You can't really compare Freya to Chloe, because the spike in popularity for Chloe was so sharp. I think parents chose Chloe believing it to be unusual, without realising that thousands of other parents had thought the same.

If you love the name, use it, because most people end up being Firstname Surname anyway. If your surname is very common, pick a more unusual first name, or don't use a go-to middle name. (There's a famous actor with a common full name, and there are about 12,000 people with the same name. He uses a different surname).

Top 10 names are nowhere near as popular as the top 10 names when we were kids. People choose from a much wider pool of names, with so many striving to be different. Remember, not every child will want to stand out with a weird and wonderful name.

Where I teach, there are several children who have a statistically popular name who are the only one in the whole school, and there are other popular names we have none of at all. Days of multiple children in a class all with the same name are all but gone. When duplications do happen, it can be something really random and unexpected anyway (which seems to annoy the parents even more). At least with a popular name you know there's a chance it may be duplicated and you're prepared. If it is, it really isn't the end of the world. Many children actually like meeting other people with the same name.

Top 10 names are nowhere near as popular as the top 10 names when we were kids. It depends on the name. Generally, it's probably true but some names can be wildly popular in one year. I don't think that will happen with Freya because it's already been popular for ages.

I didn’t use my favourite name for dd1 because it was so popular. By the time she was 3 months old I had met 3 other babies with the same name as the one I had chosen. So dd2 has my favourite name. And both their names suit them so it’s all turned out well. If you like the name Freya then use it.