A useful thread for figuring out if a name is "too popular"

[Anonymous]

So rather than yelling at people for being "uncreative" or whatever, what if we tried to help people figure out if a name is too popular for their purposes?

I do think name popularity is a concern of a lot of people, but everyone has a different threshold. However, as has been discussed in these threads before, no name today even comes close to the popularity of the really popular names from 40 years ago. Today's top girl name (Oliva) is less than a third as popular as Jennifer was in 1980, for instance. That's helpful if you are trying to avoid your kid having a name that they will share with lots of peers, for instance.

So this thread is about numbers, and reasoning. Give us a name you like, and what your popularity threshold is, and we'll try to figure out if you're in the danger zone.

Anyway, maybe this thread will fizzle, but I thought there might be a way to channel the popularity angst of other threads into something that could be useful for other parents choosing names.

[Anonymous]

Just for fun, I plugged the top names and their percentage of births in 2020 into a spreadsheet so I could look at the numbers a bit. I thought this was interesting:

Olivia (#1) was given to 1% of all girls born in 2020.
Harper (#10) is the name that is exactly half as popular as Olivia, with .5% of all girls named Harper.
Willow (#48) is exactly half as popular as Harper, with .25%
Margaret (#126) is exactly half as popular as Willow, with .124%
Milani (#267) is half as popular as Margaret, with .062%

I like these stats because they show how few kids get any one name. But I also like how they kind of show what kinds of names are popping up at what level of popularity, and it's about what you'd expect. Olivia is classic and popular, so it's common. Harper and Willow are pretty but sound more modern, so they are "on trend" but a lot less common than Olivia. Margaret is a classic that is not in favor, so it's much lower down the list. Milani is an unusual name.

I think these are all great names but different kinds of parents are going to feel differently about how common, classic, modern, or unusual they are. The rankings really don't tell the whole story.

[Anonymous]

Kyle
Travis

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kyle
Travis

I'm assuming these are both boy names.

Kyle ranks #313 in 2020, and accounts for .057% of boys born that year. This makes it about half as popular as the #181-182 names (Alex and Tristan).
The 1980 equivalent name for Kyle according to percent of births is: Karl (#225)
The 2000 equivalent name for Kyle according to percent of births is: Dominick (#271)
Kyle has been decreasing steadily in popularity. It was #37 in 2020 and has declined each year since, though never dramatically.

Kyle is not a very popular name and is on a downtrend. But it's also not an unusual name.

Travis ranks #339 in 2020, and accounts for .052% of boys born that year. This makes it half as popular as the #197-198 names (Dawson and Eric)
The 1980 equivalent name for Travis according to percent of births is: Blake or Andy (#237 and 238)
The 2000 equivalent name for Travis according to percent of births is: Albert, Nickolas or Tony (#281-283)
Travis has been decreasing in popularity since 2020 (when it was #115) but not as rapidly as Kyle.

Travis is not a very popular name and is on a downtrend. It is more unusual than Kyle but not unusual generally.

[Anonymous]

While interesting, none of this helpw much because those stats are across the US, and some names are highly concentrated in an area. When my DS was born, at his first well baby visit the pediatricin exclaimed "oh! Another Alexander, he's our 3rd one this week!". Sigh. It wasn't very high on the list when he was born, but clearly in our demographic it was popular. He has consistently been one of two or more. He doesn't really care (nor do I), but you would never have guessed it based on the SSN rankings for his year of birth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While interesting, none of this helpw much because those stats are across the US, and some names are highly concentrated in an area. When my DS was born, at his first well baby visit the pediatricin exclaimed "oh! Another Alexander, he's our 3rd one this week!". Sigh. It wasn't very high on the list when he was born, but clearly in our demographic it was popular. He has consistently been one of two or more. He doesn't really care (nor do I), but you would never have guessed it based on the SSN rankings for his year of birth.

You can look up the stats by state or territory, though. I didn't know this when I was pregnant but someone on here told me. That can help you avoid a name that is locally more popular. The name we used wound up being more popular locally than nationally, but has since fallen out of favor locally while staying pretty steady nationally. I think there was a little blip of increased popularity here and then people started laying off the name. Kind of a self-correction. Either way, we've only ever met one child with the same name, on a playground, and she was younger than my DD. She's never been in a class with another.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While interesting, none of this helpw much because those stats are across the US, and some names are highly concentrated in an area. When my DS was born, at his first well baby visit the pediatricin exclaimed "oh! Another Alexander, he's our 3rd one this week!". Sigh. It wasn't very high on the list when he was born, but clearly in our demographic it was popular. He has consistently been one of two or more. He doesn't really care (nor do I), but you would never have guessed it based on the SSN rankings for his year of birth.

Also, doctors and nurses really need to stop saying stuff like "oh look our third baby with this name this week." New parents are stressed and sleep-deprived and that is the kind of comment that would have made me feel like crap at the time, and that I would remember forever. Rude!

[Anonymous]

The people who are going to name their kid a popular name are not going to read this thread.

[Anonymous]

Looking up by region is really interesting and I think pretty useful. I was a little shocked to see just how few Olivias were born specifically in DC in 2020- it's only 53. Given the overall number of births, that doesn't seem so terrible. It's not my name choice (and I'm having a boy), but if I loved Olivia I would find that to be encouraging even though most of DCUM would trash it as way too popular, though it does seem to be reliably the number 1 name across states for 2020.

I do worry about specific populations. I'm Jewish and I plan to use a Jewish name, but I don't feel like I have a good way of knowing what names are popular in this community because Jews make up a fairly small percent of the population, so even a fairly popular name won't show up in the SSN data.

[Anonymous]

I think people freak out over name popularity way too much.

I’m a Jennifer born in the 1980s. I very rarely meet other Jennifer’s. There were none in any of my classes as a kid. Off the top of my head I can only think of one I talk to regularly. So it’s not like I’m running into Jennifer’s all the time and we’re all getting confused over who is who.

I always wonder if it says more about the parents, that they want to be seen as cool and different and non-conforming by naming their kid something that isn’t popular. If you like a name, use it. Who cares.

[Anonymous]

Milani

WTF

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looking up by region is really interesting and I think pretty useful. I was a little shocked to see just how few Olivias were born specifically in DC in 2020- it's only 53. Given the overall number of births, that doesn't seem so terrible. It's not my name choice (and I'm having a boy), but if I loved Olivia I would find that to be encouraging even though most of DCUM would trash it as way too popular, though it does seem to be reliably the number 1 name across states for 2020.

I do worry about specific populations. I'm Jewish and I plan to use a Jewish name, but I don't feel like I have a good way of knowing what names are popular in this community because Jews make up a fairly small percent of the population, so even a fairly popular name won't show up in the SSN data.

https://www.baby-chick.com/most-popular-hebrew-names-for-your-baby/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looking up by region is really interesting and I think pretty useful. I was a little shocked to see just how few Olivias were born specifically in DC in 2020- it's only 53. Given the overall number of births, that doesn't seem so terrible. It's not my name choice (and I'm having a boy), but if I loved Olivia I would find that to be encouraging even though most of DCUM would trash it as way too popular, though it does seem to be reliably the number 1 name across states for 2020.

I do worry about specific populations. I'm Jewish and I plan to use a Jewish name, but I don't feel like I have a good way of knowing what names are popular in this community because Jews make up a fairly small percent of the population, so even a fairly popular name won't show up in the SSN data.

I don't know about popularity data, but there are definitely websites that talk about Jewish names for babies and will give you lists.

If you belong to a synagogue, you might also want to look at names from birth announcements, as well as recent bat and bar mitzvahs as these will give you a sense of which names are popular within our specific Jewish community. If you don't go to synagogue, you might still be able to find some of this for your area by looking online. Or try running names by other Jewish people you know!

But truthfully, you might be better off than people were 50 years ago. A lot of names that I think of as Jewish names are now very popular among non-Jews. Not the old Hebrew names, but names that I used to think of as quintessential Jewish -- Ruth, Thea, Isaac, Jonah, Levi. I know non-Jewish kids with all these names now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people freak out over name popularity way too much.

I’m a Jennifer born in the 1980s. I very rarely meet other Jennifer’s. There were none in any of my classes as a kid. Off the top of my head I can only think of one I talk to regularly. So it’s not like I’m running into Jennifer’s all the time and we’re all getting confused over who is who.

I always wonder if it says more about the parents, that they want to be seen as cool and different and non-conforming by naming their kid something that isn’t popular. If you like a name, use it. Who cares.

Off-topic.

[Anonymous]

I definitely feel like some top names aren't as popular in this region as they are in the country overall. For example, I've met tons of young Charlottes but no Harpers at all. Both are top 10 nationally.