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

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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."[/quote]

I think sometimes what happens is someone picks a name that is #120 the year before their kids was born and then it shoots up in popularity for the year the kid is actually being named (but before stats are out).[/quote]

But that's not how name trends work. A name that goes from #120 and shoots up in popularity has generally been climbing the charts for a while, so parents who choose it usually know the name is on an upward trajectory and might go higher. I struggle to believe there are actually parents out there who are blindsided by a name suddenly becoming popular. Even fast rising names like Milo take years to go from the 900s to the 100s (or higher) and even if there are some big jumps in there, the upward trajectory is pretty obvious. Very few names are going from truly unusual to very common in a single year, thus there really are not many parents giving their kid a name and then being shocked to discover it's gotten popular. More likely there are people who give their kids uncommon names only for it to become popular when their kid is 7 or 8, OR there are people who give their kids names knowing they are on the rise and then are not super surprised when it continues to rise (especially since they actually participated in boosting the name higher).[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics