Using a popular name anyway?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This depends on your community.

In my small preschool there was at least one Nathaniel in every single class. Our class had 3!!! Three out of 6 boys had the same name. It was nuts.

+1. We're Eastern Orthodox and we know a LOT of Sophias, Anastasias, and Marias.

[Anonymous]

My kid has a top 10 name…from the 1950s. (Think Ricky or Alan.) When I am running after him in a crowd of senior citizens, so many turn around and look because they think I am scolding them. Whoops.

I guess what I’m saying is, every name was popular once. Sophie is a beautiful name and it’s not more unique than Sharon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This depends on your community.

In my small preschool there was at least one Nathaniel in every single class. Our class had 3!!! Three out of 6 boys had the same name. It was nuts.

+1. We're Eastern Orthodox and we know a LOT of Sophias, Anastasias, and Marias.

There are like 10 names per gender that work in both languages/cultures. So, of course there are tons of Victorias, Nicholases, Annas, and Marks.

[Anonymous]

You never know what will happen, but my friend group has so many Isabelles, Avas and Sophies. Maybe not so many in my kids' classes, but I feel like every other person on my Facebook friends list has at least one of these in their set of kids.

We have 3 Audreys in our extended family.

If you like a name and don't care if it is high on the popularity list, name your child whatever you like.

I personally chose to go far down the lists because of my experience with a trendy name in the 70s. But I didn't think of it as looking for an unpopular name - just a name that was not currently in heavy use. That doesn't mean the names are ugly or weird, just not currently in favor/trendy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the names husband and I like for our second baby (a girl) is in the top 5 names nationally and locally. But does that really matter? It is one of the few names we both like and it goes well with our other kid's name and our last name and the family middle name we'd like to use. Uniqueness seems to be more of an issue for girl names -- like there are 2 James in our preschool class and 2 Will's when we were in daycare and no one seemed to care at all. How much does this really matter?

What do you mean?

Who would deliberately give their kid and unpopular name? Popular names are good — and popular for a reason.

It’s like people think their snowflake has to have some obscure name to be unique or something.

And don’t get me started on the “jennifer” phenomenon. Today’s most popular names don’t even come close to the saturation of jennifer in the 1970s.

Explain Bertha(#7 in 1888).

People had different aesthetics in the 1880s? Who cares what the most popular name in 1888 was? Explain why women used to paint lines on the back of their legs to make it look like they were wearing nylons, when women today mostly think nylons are dumb and ugly.

You’re the one claiming that popular = good.

No, that was me. Who knows why people liked Bertha in the 1880s? I mean, it’s kind of like women in the aughts naming their daughters Madison, and they had never even SEEN “Splash.”

Popular names are still good. Who wants to be given an unpopular name? That doesn’t even make sense.

Maybe it’s a product of the intensive mothering/snowflake phenomenon?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Names follow trends. I do internally roll my eyes when I hear someone introduce their baby with a super common name. Like, come on, you couldn’t think out of the trend-pressure for one second?!

+1. No name is inherently prettier than another - it’s simply current fashion. I roll my eyes too.

+2 It’s like naming her “child.”

Except it's really not when even the most popular names are like .8%> of all babies born in a given year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You never know what will happen, but my friend group has so many Isabelles, Avas and Sophies. Maybe not so many in my kids' classes, but I feel like every other person on my Facebook friends list has at least one of these in their set of kids.

We have 3 Audreys in our extended family.

If you like a name and don't care if it is high on the popularity list, name your child whatever you like.

I personally chose to go far down the lists because of my experience with a trendy name in the 70s. But I didn't think of it as looking for an unpopular name - just a name that was not currently in heavy use. That doesn't mean the names are ugly or weird, just not currently in favor/trendy.

What names did you choose? Were they popular at one time and aren't anymore?

I thought of naming my daughter a popular 80s name that's no longer common like Jessica or Jennifer but my husband and I ultimately couldn't agree on one of those type names and went a different direction.

[Anonymous]

No regrets about using a popular name for our son (Max), even though he was one of 5 in his grade.
Meanwhile our daughter has a simple but uncommon name, and she always asks to change her name to Sophie or Maya.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Were they popular at one time and aren't anymore?

I thought of naming my daughter a popular 80s name that's no longer common like Jessica or Jennifer but my husband and I ultimately couldn't agree on one of those type names and went a different direction.

Their names were more popular in the 80s/90s, yes.

In my search, I came up with some names that were a little too out there for my husband, so he vetoed those. He was fine with names he was familiar with, so the names that were more popular when we were kids was the sweet spot for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:my sister regrets naming my niece Ava. There's on in every class, on every team. And she does it does kind of feel less special. Not to mention the inconvenience of having to always specify the last name or reply to invites that were sent to the wrong Ava.

Haha. This was true for my DD's kindergarten class. She kept mixing up the initials for their last names when she told us stories about her school day such that at one point we thought she had 5-6 Avas in her class. It turns out there were only 3, but one sometimes went by first name middle initial and sometimes first name last initial. So confusing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You never know what will happen, but my friend group has so many Isabelles, Avas and Sophies. Maybe not so many in my kids' classes, but I feel like every other person on my Facebook friends list has at least one of these in their set of kids.

We have 3 Audreys in our extended family.

If you like a name and don't care if it is high on the popularity list, name your child whatever you like.

I personally chose to go far down the lists because of my experience with a trendy name in the 70s. But I didn't think of it as looking for an unpopular name - just a name that was not currently in heavy use. That doesn't mean the names are ugly or weird, just not currently in favor/trendy.

What names did you choose? Were they popular at one time and aren't anymore?

I thought of naming my daughter a popular 80s name that's no longer common like Jessica or Jennifer but my husband and I ultimately couldn't agree on one of those type names and went a different direction.

DP. The two names I remember that reasonably pleased both sides were Daphne and Claudia.

[Anonymous]

My son is Jack. We had no idea how common it was but no regrets as we still love the name. And in the DC areas there are no many names from other parts of the world, common is usually not that common. When I grew up there were 5 Susans in my tiny grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Use what you like. If you don't mind it being popular, that's all that matters.

I guess the kid doesn’t matter.

The kid will be fine. No child has been harmed by a popular name.

There are a number of women on these boards who feel very harmed by their popular names and who are about to tell you AAAAALLLLL about how being Jennifer #4 ruined their childhood.

However, to help OP and to counteract this inevitable response, I will say what I always say in these threads:

Even the most popular names these days are a fraction of the popularity of the names that were very popular in the 70s/80s/90s. A tiny, tiny fraction. There are no names now like Jennifer or Emily Amanda were back then. Here, look at the top 5 names from 1980 and from 2020

1980:
Jennifer (3.3% of all female babies born that year, 58,379 babies with that name)
Amanda (2.0%, 35,817)
Jessica (1.9%, 33,924)
Melissa (1.8%, 31,639)
Sarah (1.4%, 25,758)

2020:
Olivia (1.0%, 17,535)
Emma (.9%, 15,581)
Ava (.7%, 13,084)
Charlotte (.7%, 13,003)
Sophia (.7%, 12,976)

Or, to frame it differently, if Olivia were exactly as popular in 1980 as it was in 2020 (when it was the most popular girls name) it would have ranked... 14th. And Sophia, Charlotte, and Ava would not even crack the top 20. About as popular as names like Christina, Rachel, Amber, and Jaimie. Not total unknown names, but also not names I associate with ubiquity.

OP, you're fine. Go with the name you like and can agree on and that sounds good with your last name.

Names tend to cluster by demographic, so even those 0.9% names can be more like 5-8% of your child's grade or social group. They're not evenly distributed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You never know what will happen, but my friend group has so many Isabelles, Avas and Sophies. Maybe not so many in my kids' classes, but I feel like every other person on my Facebook friends list has at least one of these in their set of kids.

We have 3 Audreys in our extended family.

If you like a name and don't care if it is high on the popularity list, name your child whatever you like.

I personally chose to go far down the lists because of my experience with a trendy name in the 70s. But I didn't think of it as looking for an unpopular name - just a name that was not currently in heavy use. That doesn't mean the names are ugly or weird, just not currently in favor/trendy.

What names did you choose? Were they popular at one time and aren't anymore?

I thought of naming my daughter a popular 80s name that's no longer common like Jessica or Jennifer but my husband and I ultimately couldn't agree on one of those type names and went a different direction.

DP. The two names I remember that reasonably pleased both sides were Daphne and Claudia.

Same DP. I’m talking about DCUM threads , btw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Names tend to cluster by demographic, so even those 0.9% names can be more like 5-8% of your child's grade or social group. They're not evenly distributed.

Agree with this, which was why I mentioned my Facebook friends. That is social group/SES.

Do any of you get your college magazine and read through the alum births section? I swear it is the same 5-10 names over and over again for my university (I think our student body was around 3600 when I was there)