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

[Anonymous]

I don't get these comments that are like "oh they thought they were being so unique by naming their kid Milo but he's one of three in class." First of all, Milo is ranked #120 -- if there are three of them in one class, it's a freak accident unlikely to be repeated in that child's life. And second, since name popularity is published online and widely reported on, I doubt anyone is using a popular name without knowing it's popular. Parents giving their kids more popular names know they are more popular and are okay with it, and thus by definition cannot think they are being "so unique." If anything, they are bucking the apparent trend of obsessing over giving your name a totally original, rare name and just saying "screw it, we just really like this name and it's okay if our special snowflake sometimes shares a name with a classmate or coworker."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fallout from the Jessica / Jennifer / Justin generation

I misguided one. Compare the popularity of Jennifer at its height to that of the current #1 girls name, Olivia: https://www.behindthename.com/name/olivia/top/united-states?compare=jennifer&type=percent

Or here's another one -- the super popular in the 70s name Jason compared to the current #1 boys name, Liam: https://www.behindthename.com/name/jason/top/united-states?compare=liam&type=percent

There's just way more diversity in naming now, there are no Jennifers, Jessicas, Justins, or Jasons (what the heck was up with J names in the 70s, actually?). You can use even a very popular name today your kid is very unlikely to share that name with lots of other kids at school, and even less likely to share it with lots of people in their workplace or community as adults.

Also I'm a DC resident and this area has so much ethnic diversity with lots of immigrant or foreign families, resulting in incredibly broad diversity even if people give their kids "common" names from their home country or culture. More than half of my child's classmates have names from a non-Western European naming tradition, including many names I learned for the first time when I met them. I think this is probably true in most large coastal cities in the US, as well as many global capitals.

This seems like a weird thing to worry about.

[Anonymous]

Who cares if your kid shares the same name as some other kid in their class, or in whatever setting later on? Really, so what?

It's so much worse to have to tell people how to pronounce or spell your name, or to correct mispronunciations and misspellings of your name, all throughout your life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up as a Jennifer/Jenny in the Midwest, and this was absolutely an important aspect of naming my children. I just wanted them to have more unique names.

I was the other end of the spectrum I wished I was a Jennifer , Lauren or Megan because my name is unique not bonkers unique, but unique enough I could never find the name items as a kid. I just wanted a keychain with my name on it😂

My name became popular when I was in my early 20’s. Before that the only people I met with the same as me were 80+. Now it’s everywhere. But I never had a license plate for my hike with my name.

[Anonymous]

My son has a name that is "normal" as far as most people know how to spell and pronounce it. But it's not very popular. It was in the 200s his birth year. This year for the first time ever there is another child with his name in class! I hate it! I picked the name knowing it would be relatively easy for others to say and spell and he might find it on a keychain, but he wouldn't have others around with the same name. Turns out this year his is the onlu repeated name in thier class!

He has never had another child on a sports team or other activity with the same name and I appreciate that. It's nice just to be known as "Larlos mom" not "Larlo A, the other Larlo, not that Larlo".

I will say that the prevalence of "popular" names isnt really an issue in our area. By which I mean most kids do not have names in the top 20 and there is generally not overlap. I think this area draws a wider array of names, and of course ethnicity and culture play in to variety as well. There aren't 4 Noahs and 4 Avas for example, only 1 of each.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son has a name that is "normal" as far as most people know how to spell and pronounce it. But it's not very popular. It was in the 200s his birth year. This year for the first time ever there is another child with his name in class! I hate it! I picked the name knowing it would be relatively easy for others to say and spell and he might find it on a keychain, but he wouldn't have others around with the same name. Turns out this year his is the onlu repeated name in thier class!

He has never had another child on a sports team or other activity with the same name and I appreciate that. It's nice just to be known as "Larlos mom" not "Larlo A, the other Larlo, not that Larlo".

I will say that the prevalence of "popular" names isnt really an issue in our area. By which I mean most kids do not have names in the top 20 and there is generally not overlap. I think this area draws a wider array of names, and of course ethnicity and culture play in to variety as well. There aren't 4 Noahs and 4 Avas for example, only 1 of each.

I have one kid with a top 30 name. She has never had a classmate with the same name. There was a kid at her preschool with the same name, but different class and they went by different nicknames.

My other kid's name is ranked in high 200s or low 300s most years. She has a classmate with the same name and there is a girl on her soccer team with the same name.

I almost think in the DC area, choosing a popular name is an end run around this issue because most people steer clear of them!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that a lot of people think that trendy names are a negative class indicator, and that might be where this is coming from.

+1 there's also a "special snowflake" aspect to it. But I think they also don't get that a "popular" name now is not as popular as the top names of 30+ years ago. I have a Jacob and it did give me pause that it had been so popular for a long time. But, it's a family name and that was important to me. He's ended up generally having at most one other Jacob in his classes. Glad I didn't let popularity drive the choice.

I have a son whose name is probably in the same “common name category” (Luke). Nearly half of the boys in his preschool class shared his first name 🤣 (4 of 9 boys). Yet, in his middle school grade of 250ish kids there is only one other. Preschool was bizarre but otherwise it has been fine.

Christian preschool, public highschool?

Yes to both 👍

[Anonymous]

This might be a white people problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it is unique to this area. There are dozens of naming sites out there. So lots of people looking at this.

OP here. I'm not talking about people who are invested in what they name their kids. I think that's pretty universal. I'm talking about a specific obsession with unpopular names. Like the mom at the BBQ was specifically bragging about how her kids all have names outside the top thousand names, and how there were only 7 kids given her younger child's name the year they were born. That is a level of obsession I've never encountered anywhere. In the city where I used to live, people would consider any name outside maybe the top 30 or so sufficiently "unpopular" to ensure your kid won't be one of several in class.

I have 2 kids with names outside the top 1000 (though the oldest's name was in the top 1000 the year we picked it). We just picked them because we liked them. However one of my kids, like the poster on the first page, hates never finding tchotkes with her name on them in gift shops. I point out repeatedly that in this era of lots of things online she can personalize all sorts of stuff with her name, but she wants to find something in the store. It's not happening.

So you can't win.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've never encountered people more weird about this issue than in the DC area. I've met three parents in the last year of living here who have confessed to me that they stress that their kids names are "too popular." None of these kids have top 10 names, their kids are the only kids I've ever met with their names, and they are nice names. I've also heard women in our neighborhood say some not nice things about names they deem too popular, or certain "name trends" they seem to be disparaging. One mom I know told a group of us that she poured over lists of names outside the top 1000 names to choose her kids names, and studied naming trends to ensure that her kids' names would not be too popular or likely to become trendy. When she said this (at a backyard bbq), other women in the conversation nodded and said things like "oh, that's so smart" and no one else seemed to be thinking what I was thinking, which was "do you have ocd by any chance?"

What the heck? I can understand not wanting to give your baby one of the most popular names (though I also think there are good reasons why people choose these names -- they are popular for good reasons, generally) but people here seem obsessed with giving their kids unpopular names and ensuring that they will never encounter another person with the same name. Can anyone explain why this is? I moved here from a large West Coast city and there's definitely some of that but people are not as self-conscious or vocal about it and it's countered by people wanting to give their kids names that are recognizably names and wanting a name that will fit in. The people out West who obsess over original names are a specific type of person (what we used to call hipsters, I know don't know how they are identified now) and are considered a little fringe. Like that guy at work who needs you to know he knows more obscure bands than you do -- it's a kind of annoying personality quirk, not a universal value. But here it seems mainstream.

What am I missing? Why are people here like this?

It goes with the generalized anxiety that permeates the area.

It also doesn’t make sense. Who would deliberately give their child an obscure name?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't get these comments that are like "oh they thought they were being so unique by naming their kid Milo but he's one of three in class." First of all, Milo is ranked #120 -- if there are three of them in one class, it's a freak accident unlikely to be repeated in that child's life. And second, since name popularity is published online and widely reported on, I doubt anyone is using a popular name without knowing it's popular. Parents giving their kids more popular names know they are more popular and are okay with it, and thus by definition cannot think they are being "so unique." If anything, they are bucking the apparent trend of obsessing over giving your name a totally original, rare name and just saying "screw it, we just really like this name and it's okay if our special snowflake sometimes shares a name with a classmate or coworker."

I think sometimes what happens is someone picks a name that is #120 the year before their kids was born and then it shoots up in popularity for the year the kid is actually being named (but before stats are out).

[Anonymous]

I notice that the big issue at work is that with autofill email, people have been accidentally sending John D's email to John W. Having a vomon name can be a privacy issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't get these comments that are like "oh they thought they were being so unique by naming their kid Milo but he's one of three in class." First of all, Milo is ranked #120 -- if there are three of them in one class, it's a freak accident unlikely to be repeated in that child's life. And second, since name popularity is published online and widely reported on, I doubt anyone is using a popular name without knowing it's popular. Parents giving their kids more popular names know they are more popular and are okay with it, and thus by definition cannot think they are being "so unique." If anything, they are bucking the apparent trend of obsessing over giving your name a totally original, rare name and just saying "screw it, we just really like this name and it's okay if our special snowflake sometimes shares a name with a classmate or coworker."

I think sometimes what happens is someone picks a name that is #120 the year before their kids was born and then it shoots up in popularity for the year the kid is actually being named (but before stats are out).

But that's not how name trends work. A name that goes from #120 and shoots up in popularity has generally been climbing the charts for a while, so parents who choose it usually know the name is on an upward trajectory and might go higher. I struggle to believe there are actually parents out there who are blindsided by a name suddenly becoming popular. Even fast rising names like Milo take years to go from the 900s to the 100s (or higher) and even if there are some big jumps in there, the upward trajectory is pretty obvious. Very few names are going from truly unusual to very common in a single year, thus there really are not many parents giving their kid a name and then being shocked to discover it's gotten popular. More likely there are people who give their kids uncommon names only for it to become popular when their kid is 7 or 8, OR there are people who give their kids names knowing they are on the rise and then are not super surprised when it continues to rise (especially since they actually participated in boosting the name higher).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I notice that the big issue at work is that with autofill email, people have been accidentally sending John D's email to John W. Having a vomon name can be a privacy issue.

Is it really a "big" issue at work? Also the vast majority of names are not as common as "John." In fact no kids today are being given names as common as John was at its peak or even long after its peak. In the 1880s, more than 8% of all male babies were named John. By 1964, it was 4%. Today, it's less than half a percent. And the most popular boys' name in 2024? Liam, which was still only given to 1.2% of boys born last year.

https://www.behindthename.com/name/john/top/united-states?compare=liam&type=percent

So the John D. and John W. email problem is solving itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't get these comments that are like "oh they thought they were being so unique by naming their kid Milo but he's one of three in class." First of all, Milo is ranked #120 -- if there are three of them in one class, it's a freak accident unlikely to be repeated in that child's life. And second, since name popularity is published online and widely reported on, I doubt anyone is using a popular name without knowing it's popular. Parents giving their kids more popular names know they are more popular and are okay with it, and thus by definition cannot think they are being "so unique." If anything, they are bucking the apparent trend of obsessing over giving your name a totally original, rare name and just saying "screw it, we just really like this name and it's okay if our special snowflake sometimes shares a name with a classmate or coworker."

Milo is ranked #120 in the nation, but do you think it is ranked #120 in Little Rock? In Arlington, VA? In Arlington, TX? Names differ in popularity by region, and that is why we had 2 girls named Xanthe, 2 girls named Sage, and 2 boys named Gray in my kid’s 1st grade year in ny (45 kids total). Not a single Jacob.