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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think a lot of parents try to find a sweet spot with names - a name people recognize, can easily say and spell but isn't everywhere. The kind of name where people say, "Yeah. That's a nice name, I haven't heard that in a while." The name then becoming popular was not part of their plan.[/quote]

LOL My best friend in college was one of the many Jennifers. Her mom was very much not a follow-the-crowd person and named her Jennifer when nobody used it. It was the "Nice name, I haven't heard that in a while." A few months later "Love Story" came out and that spawned the infinite Gen X Jennifers.[/quote]

This used to happen a lot. There were no published statistics on name frequency so people thought if they'd never met a kid with that name, they were good.

I think this is a secret reason why names have diversified so much and there are no more Jennifers or Jasons. People notice a name is "on the rise" and intentionally back off of it. You can actually see this in a lot of names -- they will shoot up and then level off, sometimes at 300, sometimes at 100, sometimes at 40. It's like people are exercising collective restraint.

I'm actually really grateful for this because my kid has a name that has climbed quick into the top 100 before we had her, but we'd had the name picked out for years and it was just already her name, so we picked it anyway. And it's just hovered right around that level ever since, not dropping or rising more than 5 or 10 spots. I'm glad to all the people not choosing the name so that we could, without it getting too popular![/quote]

Good hypothesis! I think you’re right. I have an Evelyn and picked the name in 2018. The name started trending and by the time I was ready to use it in 2021 it was top 10. Knock on wood but she’s been the only one in classes and activities so far. [/quote]

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