Reply to A useful thread for figuring out if a name is "too popular"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The majority of humans will always follow group-think, trends, and fashions.  That’s all the popular names are.  Sophia is not inherently prettier than Linda - Linda is just not in fashion. [/quote]

I agree w that. Linda is a pretty name but I have a natural aversion to it bc it just is such a 1950s name and seems like it belongs to my mom’s friends and my friends’ moms so it feels unnatural to think of a baby or young kid w the name. I feel the same way about Susan and Judy. I like the way they sound but they’re too boomer-y for me to ever choose them.

But like a lot of people nowadays who are into the old lady name trend, I do like a lot of names from my grandparents’ generation: Mary, Betty, Helen, Alice, Ruth, Frances [/quote]

Yes, there was some analysis that showed it takes three generations for names to sound fresh again and rebound in popularoty.  So right now Boomer names like Linda, Susan, Barbara, Judy still sound stale, but their mothers' names sound fresh (Helen, Alice, Mabel).

Twenty years from now little Alice and Mabel will be naming their daughters Susan and Barbara (and of course insisting that they have always loved the name bc it is their dear mother's best friend's cousin's name, and nothing to do with trends).[/quote]

Why the cynicism though about the "claiming they've always loved it" when you've just explained how that claim is probably genuine? It is very likely that people who choose names do so specifically because they now sound fresh and different to them, and don't remind them of their parents or their parents siblings or friends, and also don't remind them of people they grew up with or now work with or are friends with. That leaves their grandparents' generation of names.

In other words, it's not that these people are blindly following a trend or naming their kids Alice or Mabel because they heard about some cool celebrity doing it. It's that these names organically sound good to the ears of people currently having kids, and therefore they are choosing the names, and thus a trend is born. And the same will be true when our children name their kids Susan and Barbara and we think "Like Aunt Barb who wears too much perfume? Ugh, why?" It's because they have no memory of an aunt named Barbara wearing too much perfume, and the name hits their ears different.

I hate the criticism of people "following name trends" because I don't think many people pick a trendy name on purpose. It's just that names that appeal to some people often appeal to a lot of people. That's it. No one is scouring name lists and thinking "oh, I want to give my kid the hottest, trendiest name of 2022 -- let's see if I can pick a winner about to jump 100 spots into the top 50!" As this thread shows, most people would like to avoid that if they can, but sometimes it's hard because you only learn about certain trends after the fact.[/quote]

PP here.  It wasn't meant to be a criticism - just an observation that people unwittingly follow trends while insisting that they aren't.  (E.g., I have several friends who said they chose Henry or Leo because it's a family name DESPITE it being trendy - but obviously it's a family name that is also very in-fashion right now.  No one is naming their son Norman or Igor because it's a family name).[/quote]

Yes but they might be naming their kids Henry and Leo because they went through all their family names and those sounded most appealing to them. It doesn’t mean they just picked Henry because they love trendy names and are using the family name thing as a ruse.

It just seems like you are assuming people are blindly following trends and lying about their intentions and name inspiration, but I think it’s more likely people are looking for names that appeal to them and the trends naturally emerge from that.[/quote]

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