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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Fallout from the Jessica / Jennifer / Justin generation [/quote]
YES. I have one of these names and it was important to me my kid not have a top 20 name. I hated it when I was a kid and I still hate it. Call my name in a crowd of parents and 5 moms will turn around. [/quote]

As numerous people have explained, a top 20 name today is much less common than any top 20 name from a generation ago. I also have one of those super popular names from the 80s. There were a half dozen girls in my high school with the same name, and it's very common in pretty much any community I'm in.

But it would be hard if not impossible to give a kid a name like that today. Even if you gave them a #1 name, it would probably never be as ever present as the top names from when I was a kid. Not only is no name as popular as the top names from back then, but it also seems like names cycle in and out of popularity with more regularity now. I am constantly meeting kids who have names I've never heard of before. People are inventing names, borrowing from other cultures, revitalizing old names, at a pace and to a degree they never did before. There's just more variety across the board and that is really preventing dominance of any particular names.

At the same time, picking a lower ranked name often gives the perception of less popularity but it's actually part of a name trend that could easily lead to the same name confusion you experience, just with similar sounding names. Like Selena, Sabrina, and Serena are all different names and none of them are that popular. But together they would be a top 100 name blob. Or like the name Eleanora is ranked quite low, but it nicknames to Ellie (super common, shared with some very top names) or Nora (ranked #22 itself). There are actually lots of names like Eleanora ranked very low, often outside the top 1000 altogether, but they sound so similar to more popular names that it doesn't really matter. There are like seven versions of the name Lily, for instance -- Lily, Lilly, Lillian, Lilliana, Lillia, etc. An alternative spelling of Elizabeth (Elisabeth) is ranked pretty low, and a similar sounding but totally different name (Elspeth) isn't even in the top 1000, yet women with those names will all be mistaken for one another (and may all wind up with the same or similar nicknames). And so on. There are also unpopular girls names that sound really similar (or are the same) as very popular boys names. Will being a female Noa really feel so original when Noah is such a popular boys name?

People are always hunting for "fresh" sounding names, something unique and different, but in doing so, you can't help but reach for things that are familiar, whether it's the rhythm or the sound or beginning or ending of the name, and any of those can and often are trendy. This idea that you will pluck some truly original name out of the air that will never be confused with other names is probably a fools errand, and might result in a name that is simply unappealing to the ear. These naming trends exist for a reason -- we tend to like certain sounds or have good associations with the same combinations of sounds. Thus, name trends.

You have to just let it go. Think of sharing names with other people as a potential connection, instead of a source of friction.[/quote]

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