Does anyone use normal baby names anymore?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister was telling me about some of the wacky names of kids that her daughter goes to preschool with. These included the likes of Kynslee (actual spelling), Ridge, Remington, Jazlyn, Walker.

For reference, this is at a preschool in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. It is not a lower class area by any means.

This sounds very Texas.

It’s 1000% a minority lower class neighborhood. I’m from Texas and the last few babies my friends there have had are Daniel, Wells, Campbell, and Marjorie.

Contrary to popular belief, wealthy WASPs (especially the influencer and public figure types) aren’t immune to giving their children stupid names. I’ve heard surnames used as first names, random words (Story, River, Journey, Navy, Chase, Rowdy), common names that are intentionally misspelled to appear more “unique”, girls given very masculine names, girls given unisex or masculine names with “feminized” spellings (Tristyn, Camryn, Elliotte). I’m sure I’ve even missed some categories because there’s a lot of examples.

Yes, you did. You missed the locations, weapons/violence, and trying too hard to be preppy/frat bro categories: Austin, Boston, Phoenix, Bronx, Brooklyn, Remington, Colt, Wesson, Cutter, Blade, Brooks, Banks, Wells, Briggs, Brock, Bradford, Beau, Prescott, Tripp, Crew. Need I say more?

Mace, Fulton, Dayton, Cheyenne, tons more.

Don't totally agree with Tripp unless it's a given name. They only Tripp I know uses that because he's the third.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I dunno, define normal. I always hated boring, common names (as I have a boring, common name, think Sarah) and so I wanted to give my kids names that were a bit more interesting and unusual (though I do not, for the record, like weird spellings).

Well, my son is Sebastian (Beautiful! Unusual! Delightful! A variety of nicknames!) and it turns out EVERYONE in my neighborhood named their son Sebastian. There's like four of them in 10 block radius. There's literally three white boys in my kid's class and two of them are named Sebastian.

Cross another parenting goal of the list.

I know so many Sebastians and Cecilias and both were on my list as “unusual” names.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister was telling me about some of the wacky names of kids that her daughter goes to preschool with. These included the likes of Kynslee (actual spelling), Ridge, Remington, Jazlyn, Walker.

For reference, this is at a preschool in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. It is not a lower class area by any means.

This sounds very Texas.

It’s 1000% a minority lower class neighborhood. I’m from Texas and the last few babies my friends there have had are Daniel, Wells, Campbell, and Marjorie.

Contrary to popular belief, wealthy WASPs (especially the influencer and public figure types) aren’t immune to giving their children stupid names. I’ve heard surnames used as first names, random words (Story, River, Journey, Navy, Chase, Rowdy), common names that are intentionally misspelled to appear more “unique”, girls given very masculine names, girls given unisex or masculine names with “feminized” spellings (Tristyn, Camryn, Elliotte). I’m sure I’ve even missed some categories because there’s a lot of examples.

Yes, you did. You missed the locations, weapons/violence, and trying too hard to be preppy/frat bro categories: Austin, Boston, Phoenix, Bronx, Brooklyn, Remington, Colt, Wesson, Cutter, Blade, Brooks, Banks, Wells, Briggs, Brock, Bradford, Beau, Prescott, Tripp, Crew. Need I say more?

Mace, Fulton, Dayton, Cheyenne, tons more.

Don't totally agree with Tripp unless it's a given name. They only Tripp I know uses that because he's the third.

He's in know a Trip menage he's the third
Also a Skip because he has his grandfather's name. And a Quincey because he's the fifth!

[Anonymous]

The wealthiest person I knew in college was literally named Forbes, but he didn't go by that. He was very, very New York wealthy like to the point where it's another culture entirely. Nice kid but had really tacky taste in girlfriends and grew up to be an "investor" aka do nothing. Second wealthiest was named Jessica and became NYC police commissioner.

[Anonymous]

I hate tacky “unique” names. Just wait until your child is in school and class lists start being sent home. It sounds superficial to say, but those kinds of names mess up every class list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister was telling me about some of the wacky names of kids that her daughter goes to preschool with. These included the likes of Kynslee (actual spelling), Ridge, Remington, Jazlyn, Walker.

For reference, this is at a preschool in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. It is not a lower class area by any means.

This sounds very Texas.

It’s 1000% a minority lower class neighborhood. I’m from Texas and the last few babies my friends there have had are Daniel, Wells, Campbell, and Marjorie.

So this means you think these two are upper class names? Oh, honey....

The topic is normal names, and yes those are quite normal, “honey”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I dunno, define normal. I always hated boring, common names (as I have a boring, common name, think Sarah) and so I wanted to give my kids names that were a bit more interesting and unusual (though I do not, for the record, like weird spellings).

Well, my son is Sebastian (Beautiful! Unusual! Delightful! A variety of nicknames!) and it turns out EVERYONE in my neighborhood named their son Sebastian. There's like four of them in 10 block radius. There's literally three white boys in my kid's class and two of them are named Sebastian.

Cross another parenting goal of the list.

I think this happens a lot. A whole bunch of educated millennial women with those common, boring names had kids and started looking further down the name lists. They were never going to have a Tragedeigh or Jayden or even at this point a Sophia so were all looking at the same band of, ""real" names with correct spelling that appear fairly unique." But these groups also cluster and live near one another so you get these hyper local micro-trends with these names that shouldn't feel like they're everywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister was telling me about some of the wacky names of kids that her daughter goes to preschool with. These included the likes of Kynslee (actual spelling), Ridge, Remington, Jazlyn, Walker.

For reference, this is at a preschool in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. It is not a lower class area by any means.

This sounds very Texas.

It’s 1000% a minority lower class neighborhood. I’m from Texas and the last few babies my friends there have had are Daniel, Wells, Campbell, and Marjorie.

Hmm, my white relatives use those sorts of names: Walker, Ridge, etc...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dunno, define normal. I always hated boring, common names (as I have a boring, common name, think Sarah) and so I wanted to give my kids names that were a bit more interesting and unusual (though I do not, for the record, like weird spellings).

Well, my son is Sebastian (Beautiful! Unusual! Delightful! A variety of nicknames!) and it turns out EVERYONE in my neighborhood named their son Sebastian. There's like four of them in 10 block radius. There's literally three white boys in my kid's class and two of them are named Sebastian.

Cross another parenting goal of the list.

I think this happens a lot. A whole bunch of educated millennial women with those common, boring names had kids and started looking further down the name lists. They were never going to have a Tragedeigh or Jayden or even at this point a Sophia so were all looking at the same band of, ""real" names with correct spelling that appear fairly unique." But these groups also cluster and live near one another so you get these hyper local micro-trends with these names that shouldn't feel like they're everywhere.

Yes, I have been surprised at several names that there are multiples of at our elementary school even though they are statistically much less common. But I think they are trendy with a very specific demographic and thus multiple families in our neighborhood chose the name thinking it would be unique. It has backfired in a surprising way (people do get over it).

My kids both have names in the top 50. One of them (with a top 30 name) has one other girl in the school with the name but she goes by a different nickname, and the other has never met another kid with the same name. I almost think we've benefitted from the cultural pressure to pick a unique name, because I sense that a lot of parents stay away from names ranked as highly as my kids' names are, so in a weird way the statistical popularity of our kids' names has made them less common where we live.

I am curious as to where all the kids are with my kids' names, though. I wonder if we moved to some other region if suddenly our kids' names would be everywhere? We live in a UMC, well educated corner of DC (that is also quite international, which I think adds to the diversity of names here). If we moved to a suburb of Chicago would it be a different story? I don't know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dunno, define normal. I always hated boring, common names (as I have a boring, common name, think Sarah) and so I wanted to give my kids names that were a bit more interesting and unusual (though I do not, for the record, like weird spellings).

Well, my son is Sebastian (Beautiful! Unusual! Delightful! A variety of nicknames!) and it turns out EVERYONE in my neighborhood named their son Sebastian. There's like four of them in 10 block radius. There's literally three white boys in my kid's class and two of them are named Sebastian.

Cross another parenting goal of the list.

I think this happens a lot. A whole bunch of educated millennial women with those common, boring names had kids and started looking further down the name lists. They were never going to have a Tragedeigh or Jayden or even at this point a Sophia so were all looking at the same band of, ""real" names with correct spelling that appear fairly unique." But these groups also cluster and live near one another so you get these hyper local micro-trends with these names that shouldn't feel like they're everywhere.

Yes, I have been surprised at several names that there are multiples of at our elementary school even though they are statistically much less common. But I think they are trendy with a very specific demographic and thus multiple families in our neighborhood chose the name thinking it would be unique. It has backfired in a surprising way (people do get over it).

My kids both have names in the top 50. One of them (with a top 30 name) has one other girl in the school with the name but she goes by a different nickname, and the other has never met another kid with the same name. I almost think we've benefitted from the cultural pressure to pick a unique name, because I sense that a lot of parents stay away from names ranked as highly as my kids' names are, so in a weird way the statistical popularity of our kids' names has made them less common where we live.

I am curious as to where all the kids are with my kids' names, though. I wonder if we moved to some other region if suddenly our kids' names would be everywhere? We live in a UMC, well educated corner of DC (that is also quite international, which I think adds to the diversity of names here). If we moved to a suburb of Chicago would it be a different story? I don't know.

My kids' names are Gabriel and Penelope, for reference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is just a casual thread. I’m in a pregnant moms group on Facebook, and a post popped up from someone asking what the moms in the group are planning to name their babies. I read out of curiosity, and 99% of the names (on a post with hundreds of comments) were absolutely outrageous. I’m talking Timber, Kollyns, Huntley, Bexlee, Hayzen, etc. Maybe it’s because I’m a FTM and am not around small children on a regular basis, but I feel like this mentality of needing to be unique is a relatively new phenomenon/trend. I’m starting to think my child is going to be the odd one out.

No because everyone thinks their precious little snowflake needs a “youneek” name.

[Anonymous]

I wish parents would realize that uncommon doesn’t necessarily mean good. There might just be a reason that your child is the only person you’ve ever met with a certain name. 🤔