Why are people in the DC area so weird about name popularity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Class indicator. My siblings and I have classic names and grew up in DC in the NW private school world in the 80s/90s. We did not know many Jennifers. I went to a state school for college and they were everywhere.

People in DC are very class-conscious (even if they don't say this out loud). The worst case scenario would be naming your child something that blows up and becomes the go-to flyover name for a decade right after you use it. Obviously the names that are already trendy are off the table, but names, like fashion, tend to start off as "original" and then trickle down and become trendy/overdone.

Your best bet is to go with something a little boring and in the family. Worst case scenario is it becomes trendy and you can at least say, "that was my grandmother's name." I am talking Anne, Elizabeth, Edward, John, etc.

This is a very depressing way to live.

But it also only explains why wealthy people often stick to "classic" or "timeless" names like Elizabeth or Edward (both very common, popular names). It does not explain why a UMC person would scour the bottom of the name popularity list to name their child Freya or Cyril or something.

My mother’s side is French Catholic and I have so many relatives including my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and on and on who are named Mary Elizabeth or Elizabeth Mary. A lot of Irish guys years ago were named John or Edward. The names are mainstream classic.

As long as a name is spelled the way it’s supposed to be spelled I don’t see a problem. Choose classic or trendy, whichever name you love saying.

This is how I feel. Olivia, Freya, Elizabeth... whatever works for you. The only names that read as "low class" to me are names that are either intentionally misspelled to make them seem more interesting ("Everleigh") or where it seems like the parents truly did not know how the name was spelled and were too lazy/disinterested to look it up ("Meeuh"). Both of these speak to both lack of education and poor judgment to me. But an accepted spelling of literally any other name? Its popularity or style might tell me something about how you see yourselves (international, traditional, new-agey, whimsical) but it doesn't necessarily tell me about your socio-economic level or family background. As has been discussed at length in this thread, people can try to game that by using names they believe convey certain status regardless of whether the family has that status or not. I know working class families who named their kids classic names like William and wealthy, old money families who named their kids trendy names like Freya.