Reply to Would You Use a Top 5 Popular Baby Name?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We ended up not choosing a name I loved since I was a little girl (and still love) but our last name is very common (let’s say Smith).

When our 10 yr old was born (Sibley) she was early and we still had three names we were considering. The name I loved was Abigail. I don’t know how highly ranked it was in 2012, but at about 24 hours postpartum the nurse asked what we were thinking and, when I named the 3 names, she said “oh, I absolutely LOVe the name Abigail, we had five Abigails born here yesterday! She could be the 6th!” We picked the other two names we liked as first and middle. I love her name, which was ranked about 120 or so at the time, but I think in 10 years I’ve met 2-3 other children with her name AND that’s about how many Abigails / Abby / Gails I’ve met her age too.

The name we chose was “botanical” (think Lily, Rose, Iris, Laurel…) and I read once in 2013 that botanical names spiked in popularity in 2012. So we tried avoiding the popular name, but ended up being part of a trend.

[/quote]

This is true. It's not uncommon for names to make big jumps over a year or two. You can pick a name in the 300s and it will be top 80 by the time your kid is 2. Or you can pick one ranked 93 and it will be 30 in the same time.

You can also pick a name ranked much lower on the national list only to discover that it's in the top 100 in your state, and as others have noted, there are hyper-local trends. If you live in the DC-area, picking a name ranked low on the list can be little guarantee because of how international and diverse this area is. On the one hand, this means that there is a broader variety of names used here than you might find in a more homogenous metro area. On the other hand, this means that names that would seem very unique in other parts of the country can be more commonplace here. For instance, here are some names ranked in the top 100 in DC that are well outside it on the national list:

Zara
Amara
Frances
Noa

An extremely popular trend in this area is names that are easily pronounced in multiple languages, reflecting how many people here were born or have lived abroad, or have family abroad. So you see lots of names like Zara/Amara/Noa as well as the more universally popular Mia and Ava.

The point is, you can try to game the popularity game but it's more complex than just choosing a name ranked very low on the national list. Unless you are going super deep in the top 1000, or off the list altogether (and even then, you never know!).[/quote]

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