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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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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."

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.

... and? Who cares? Why does the popularity of the name matter? All of the names you just mentioned are not very popular overall, too, so even if the kid winds up in a little bubble where there are a couple in school with them, in the rest of their life they will have a fairly uncommon name.

So why does it matter? Why fixate?

Answered in the first comment posted-status. Giving your kid a trending name is often judged as low class. DC is a pretty status obsessed place and no parent here want to use Milo and in three years see it has become the next Brayden.

Brayden may be considered a "low class" name but it's not particularly popular. It's ranked #190, not far on the list from names like Finn, Oscar, Nico, and Max, all names used by people I know who valued a name that wasn't "too popular."

The popularity of a name is not what makes it low or high class. If anything, an obsession with choosing an "original" name is precisely what leads to those Utah manglings like Brayden/Jayden/Kayden or Kinsleigh/Paisley/Brynleigh. Those are efforts to be unique. It would have been been classier to just name their kids William and Sofia.

Popularity is similar but not the same as trends. Did you not read what I wrote, or can you not understand the difference?

A name Brayden is not as popular as James, but it is absolutely more trendy. Any name chart curve can show this information. It’s not popularity that makes a name low class (to some people) it’s trendiness.

Thank you, my reading comprehension is fine. This thread is about popularity, if you wanted to make a distinction about "trendiness" then you should have said so. Brayden is not that popular of a name. It might be trendy, but I think the real issue is that it trends among people who lack status. It is popular among middle class families in places like Utah, which makes it "low class" to a UMC person living in a coastal city. The issue is not its popularity but its social coding.

By comparison, look at the trend of the name Ezra, which has recently followed the same trajectory as Brayden but a few years behind: https://www.behindthename.com/name/brayden/top/united-states?compare=Ezra&type=percent

It's a similarly "spiky" name reflecting a very sudden interest in the name -- a trend. Yet Ezra is coded as intellectual, coastal, and cosmopolitan. It is currently much more popular than Brayden. But it's considered as more "high class" than Brayden.

So no, it's not just that popular names are viewed as more "low class".

[Anonymous]

I have a Will and Katherine and only recently realized maybe I was subconsciously influenced by the British Royal Family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a Will and Katherine and only recently realized maybe I was subconsciously influenced by the British Royal Family.

Ha, I have a friend who did this as well and it really wasn't until several years after her youngest was born that any of us made the connection. They are just such classic names -- I think she and her husband had them picked out for years before they had kids (they were high school sweethearts). But yeah, now it's funny.

I think we're all influenced by names just kind of in the ether when we choose our kids names, whether we want to admit it or not. You may not know why a certain name hits your ear just right when it does, but it's probably not just its inherent qualities. It's also all these little associations we have with it that result in us developing a positive feeling or affinity for the name, and those associations usually come from the broader community or culture. None of us is as individual and original as we like to think.

[Anonymous]

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.

I think this is part of it; people not wanting names that are newly popular or clearly trending for a few years. The other piece is people wanting to be creative and unique and avoid the Jessica issue they experienced growing up.

All 3 of my kids have top 10 names. I like a classic like James and clearly didn’t mind common names

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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."

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.

... and? Who cares? Why does the popularity of the name matter? All of the names you just mentioned are not very popular overall, too, so even if the kid winds up in a little bubble where there are a couple in school with them, in the rest of their life they will have a fairly uncommon name.

So why does it matter? Why fixate?

Answered in the first comment posted-status. Giving your kid a trending name is often judged as low class. DC is a pretty status obsessed place and no parent here want to use Milo and in three years see it has become the next Brayden.

Brayden may be considered a "low class" name but it's not particularly popular. It's ranked #190, not far on the list from names like Finn, Oscar, Nico, and Max, all names used by people I know who valued a name that wasn't "too popular."

The popularity of a name is not what makes it low or high class. If anything, an obsession with choosing an "original" name is precisely what leads to those Utah manglings like Brayden/Jayden/Kayden or Kinsleigh/Paisley/Brynleigh. Those are efforts to be unique. It would have been been classier to just name their kids William and Sofia.

Popularity is similar but not the same as trends. Did you not read what I wrote, or can you not understand the difference?

A name Brayden is not as popular as James, but it is absolutely more trendy. Any name chart curve can show this information. It’s not popularity that makes a name low class (to some people) it’s trendiness.

Thank you, my reading comprehension is fine. This thread is about popularity, if you wanted to make a distinction about "trendiness" then you should have said so. Brayden is not that popular of a name. It might be trendy, but I think the real issue is that it trends among people who lack status. It is popular among middle class families in places like Utah, which makes it "low class" to a UMC person living in a coastal city. The issue is not its popularity but its social coding.

By comparison, look at the trend of the name Ezra, which has recently followed the same trajectory as Brayden but a few years behind: https://www.behindthename.com/name/brayden/top/united-states?compare=Ezra&type=percent

It's a similarly "spiky" name reflecting a very sudden interest in the name -- a trend. Yet Ezra is coded as intellectual, coastal, and cosmopolitan. It is currently much more popular than Brayden. But it's considered as more "high class" than Brayden.

So no, it's not just that popular names are viewed as more "low class".

Ezra is only viewed (by some) as more cosmopolitan and intellectual because it’s “a few years behind”, as you yourself acknowledged.

Soon enough the masses will catch on that “cosmopolitan intellectual” parents are using it and use it too and it will be just as plebeian as Mason or Braydon or something. This phenomenon has been widely documented.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

YES. I have one of these names and it was important to me my kid not have a top 20 name. I hated it when I was a kid and I still hate it. Call my name in a crowd of parents and 5 moms will turn around.

The flip side of this is my name which is legitimately rare. In this day of online postings and internet searches it is hard to have such a rare name and keep one's privacy. If I posted something using my name all that know me will instantly know that it was I who posted that message. Sometimes that is limiting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

YES. I have one of these names and it was important to me my kid not have a top 20 name. I hated it when I was a kid and I still hate it. Call my name in a crowd of parents and 5 moms will turn around.

As numerous people have explained, a top 20 name today is much less common than any top 20 name from a generation ago. I also have one of those super popular names from the 80s. There were a half dozen girls in my high school with the same name, and it's very common in pretty much any community I'm in.

But it would be hard if not impossible to give a kid a name like that today. Even if you gave them a #1 name, it would probably never be as ever present as the top names from when I was a kid. Not only is no name as popular as the top names from back then, but it also seems like names cycle in and out of popularity with more regularity now. I am constantly meeting kids who have names I've never heard of before. People are inventing names, borrowing from other cultures, revitalizing old names, at a pace and to a degree they never did before. There's just more variety across the board and that is really preventing dominance of any particular names.

At the same time, picking a lower ranked name often gives the perception of less popularity but it's actually part of a name trend that could easily lead to the same name confusion you experience, just with similar sounding names. Like Selena, Sabrina, and Serena are all different names and none of them are that popular. But together they would be a top 100 name blob. Or like the name Eleanora is ranked quite low, but it nicknames to Ellie (super common, shared with some very top names) or Nora (ranked #22 itself). There are actually lots of names like Eleanora ranked very low, often outside the top 1000 altogether, but they sound so similar to more popular names that it doesn't really matter. There are like seven versions of the name Lily, for instance -- Lily, Lilly, Lillian, Lilliana, Lillia, etc. An alternative spelling of Elizabeth (Elisabeth) is ranked pretty low, and a similar sounding but totally different name (Elspeth) isn't even in the top 1000, yet women with those names will all be mistaken for one another (and may all wind up with the same or similar nicknames). And so on. There are also unpopular girls names that sound really similar (or are the same) as very popular boys names. Will being a female Noa really feel so original when Noah is such a popular boys name?

People are always hunting for "fresh" sounding names, something unique and different, but in doing so, you can't help but reach for things that are familiar, whether it's the rhythm or the sound or beginning or ending of the name, and any of those can and often are trendy. This idea that you will pluck some truly original name out of the air that will never be confused with other names is probably a fools errand, and might result in a name that is simply unappealing to the ear. These naming trends exist for a reason -- we tend to like certain sounds or have good associations with the same combinations of sounds. Thus, name trends.

You have to just let it go. Think of sharing names with other people as a potential connection, instead of a source of friction.

Wow you have a lot of feelings about this. No, I don’t have to “let it go”. And for the record my kid is in upper elementary and I am very happy with the name I chose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

We gave our child an obscure name. We spent many hours looking for names whose meanings and histories / culture mattered or was connected to our lives and how/where we met. It doesn’t matter to us whether the name is or becomes popular — we’d be glad for that to happen. We then also have a very common middle name that is a family name so there is a fallback option if our child preferred something less obscure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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."

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.

... and? Who cares? Why does the popularity of the name matter? All of the names you just mentioned are not very popular overall, too, so even if the kid winds up in a little bubble where there are a couple in school with them, in the rest of their life they will have a fairly uncommon name.

So why does it matter? Why fixate?

Answered in the first comment posted-status. Giving your kid a trending name is often judged as low class. DC is a pretty status obsessed place and no parent here want to use Milo and in three years see it has become the next Brayden.

Brayden may be considered a "low class" name but it's not particularly popular. It's ranked #190, not far on the list from names like Finn, Oscar, Nico, and Max, all names used by people I know who valued a name that wasn't "too popular."

The popularity of a name is not what makes it low or high class. If anything, an obsession with choosing an "original" name is precisely what leads to those Utah manglings like Brayden/Jayden/Kayden or Kinsleigh/Paisley/Brynleigh. Those are efforts to be unique. It would have been been classier to just name their kids William and Sofia.

Popularity is similar but not the same as trends. Did you not read what I wrote, or can you not understand the difference?

A name Brayden is not as popular as James, but it is absolutely more trendy. Any name chart curve can show this information. It’s not popularity that makes a name low class (to some people) it’s trendiness.

Thank you, my reading comprehension is fine. This thread is about popularity, if you wanted to make a distinction about "trendiness" then you should have said so. Brayden is not that popular of a name. It might be trendy, but I think the real issue is that it trends among people who lack status. It is popular among middle class families in places like Utah, which makes it "low class" to a UMC person living in a coastal city. The issue is not its popularity but its social coding.

By comparison, look at the trend of the name Ezra, which has recently followed the same trajectory as Brayden but a few years behind: https://www.behindthename.com/name/brayden/top/united-states?compare=Ezra&type=percent

It's a similarly "spiky" name reflecting a very sudden interest in the name -- a trend. Yet Ezra is coded as intellectual, coastal, and cosmopolitan. It is currently much more popular than Brayden. But it's considered as more "high class" than Brayden.

So no, it's not just that popular names are viewed as more "low class".

Ezra is only viewed (by some) as more cosmopolitan and intellectual because it’s “a few years behind”, as you yourself acknowledged.

Soon enough the masses will catch on that “cosmopolitan intellectual” parents are using it and use it too and it will be just as plebeian as Mason or Braydon or something. This phenomenon has been widely documented.

I disagree. People in coastal cities will view Brayden and Ezra totally differently even when they have similar popularity because of other associations. Ezra is one of those "old person" names that have become popular recently. A lot of people using it are likely naming after a relative (fun fact: Ezra is a Hebrew name and in Ashkenazi tradition, you are not supposed to name children after living relatives, so there's kind of a built in name cycle in some Jewish communities as people name children after great-grandparents but rarely after grandparents) or have positive associations with famous Ezras like Ezra Pound.

Meanwhile, Brayden is one of those invented names that didn't exist before the year 2000. It has no history and thus has a much narrower association with the sorts of people who choose names like Brayden now, who are largely not well-educated elites in large cities.

They may have similar popularity spikes, but they will never have similar cultural or class associations because they are simply very different names.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

YES. I have one of these names and it was important to me my kid not have a top 20 name. I hated it when I was a kid and I still hate it. Call my name in a crowd of parents and 5 moms will turn around.

The flip side of this is my name which is legitimately rare. In this day of online postings and internet searches it is hard to have such a rare name and keep one's privacy. If I posted something using my name all that know me will instantly know that it was I who posted that message. Sometimes that is limiting.

+1, I often appreciate the natural anonymity of my very common name. I've been told I'm "un-google-able" because both my first and last name are super common. Given that I have learned on DCUM that is is common for people to look up neighbors, other parents from school, and coworkers online, I'm actually grateful that doing this will turn up almost nothing for me (or rather, will turn up an onslaught of info for a bunch of people who are not me and thus make it pretty hard to figure out which applies to me). It's a natural guard against stalkers and busybodies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

YES. I have one of these names and it was important to me my kid not have a top 20 name. I hated it when I was a kid and I still hate it. Call my name in a crowd of parents and 5 moms will turn around.

The flip side of this is my name which is legitimately rare. In this day of online postings and internet searches it is hard to have such a rare name and keep one's privacy. If I posted something using my name all that know me will instantly know that it was I who posted that message. Sometimes that is limiting.

This. I am so easy to find online because I might be the only person in the country with my full name. I overcorrected and gave my kids super basic names. My son's is usually top 20, my daughter's is significantly less popular at the moment but still quite common over the years.

[Anonymous]

Because it's a striver culture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because it's a striver culture.

Ding ding. People in DC always want to be better than other people, even at something like naming their kids, which is the kind of thing that should just be individual and not competitive. But people in this area will turn anything into a competition -- naming children, composting, going to restaurants, reading the news. We all know those people who are always trying to one-up everyone over everything and DC has more of them than other places.

For those of us who don't like competition, it takes effort and practice to learn to just ignore these people and not get drawn into their dumb games. My kid has a top 30 name, it's perfect for her and she loves it, zero regrets. You do you but we're fine over here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

YES. I have one of these names and it was important to me my kid not have a top 20 name. I hated it when I was a kid and I still hate it. Call my name in a crowd of parents and 5 moms will turn around.

The flip side of this is my name which is legitimately rare. In this day of online postings and internet searches it is hard to have such a rare name and keep one's privacy. If I posted something using my name all that know me will instantly know that it was I who posted that message. Sometimes that is limiting.

+1, I often appreciate the natural anonymity of my very common name. I've been told I'm "un-google-able" because both my first and last name are super common. Given that I have learned on DCUM that is is common for people to look up neighbors, other parents from school, and coworkers online, I'm actually grateful that doing this will turn up almost nothing for me (or rather, will turn up an onslaught of info for a bunch of people who are not me and thus make it pretty hard to figure out which applies to me). It's a natural guard against stalkers and busybodies.

+2 I like my common name for this reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because it's a striver culture.

Ding ding. People in DC always want to be better than other people, even at something like naming their kids, which is the kind of thing that should just be individual and not competitive. But people in this area will turn anything into a competition -- naming children, composting, going to restaurants, reading the news. We all know those people who are always trying to one-up everyone over everything and DC has more of them than other places.

For those of us who don't like competition, it takes effort and practice to learn to just ignore these people and not get drawn into their dumb games. My kid has a top 30 name, it's perfect for her and she loves it, zero regrets. You do you but we're fine over here.

Multiple people have repeatedly told you we did not like our experience with our super common names as kids. This is hardly “striving” to want to not make your kid have the same crappy experience.