Reply to Using a popular name anyway?

Forum Index » Expectant and Postpartum Moms

Reply to "Using a popular name anyway?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Names tend to cluster by demographic, so even those 0.9% names can be more like 5-8% of your child's grade or social group.  They're not evenly distributed.[/quote]

Agree with this, which was why I mentioned my Facebook friends. That is social group/SES.

Do any of you get your college magazine and read through the alum births section? I swear it is the same 5-10 names over and over again for my university (I think our student body was around 3600 when I was there)[/quote]

But are they all top 10 names? That's what's relevant for OP. My general observation is that highly educated people with relatively high SES (which I'm guessing is the general demographic of your LAC alma mater) do tend to give their kids similar names, but not names from the top 10. All the angst you see on this thread illustrates that well, and demonstrates why trying to game it is kind of silly. You will wind up gravitating towards the kinds of names that someone like you is sort of programmed to like based on your background, entertainment habits, social circle, etc. Lean into it. It's fine.[/quote]

DP. The girl will eventually turn 18, and her bubble will expand. Top 10 names are still relevant for the OP.[/quote]

And, as has been explained, when you expand your bubble wider, these names are really not that common.

OP names her kid Sophia. She meets very few Sophias as a child because it's been deemed "too popular" by all the other parents in her peer group, and she gets to have a pretty uncommon, but lovely and classic, name as a child.

Then Sophia goes to college, graduates, gets a job. She encounters the broader world beyond her subgroup. Where Sophia, despite being a "top 5" name in 2020, is still actually not that common because, again, less than 1% of all female babies (meaning less than .5% of all babies total) get that name in any given year. So in any hundred people Sophia meets, on average, 1/2 person will have the name Sophia.

This is not a big deal. In a weird way, top 10 names get more evenly distributed through the population than other names because, being POPULAR, they can no longer become TRENDY. The trendy names are the ones currently ranked in the 300s that are about to jump up the charts. And it's hard to know which ones they are unless you are obsessed. OP has selected a remarkably safe name that is unlikely to ever cause any issues for her DD. Is it exciting? No. But names don't have to be exciting. She's naming a person, not a tech start-up.[/quote]

Except that “Sophia” is not distributed as evenly as you think.[/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