Hi Swistle,
I know you sometimes use your baby name blog to have discussions, which I always enjoy. I was thinking recently that it might be fun to have a post on real-life examples of name popularity not playing out as expected. I’m specifically thinking about times when a rare name turned out to be not-so-rare in a particular social circle, but it could also be interesting to hear about the opposite (cases where a child has a name that you know from Social Security stats is very popular and yet said child has ended up being the only person in school/town/etc. with that name). I know people who write to you for advice are often very concerned with the impact of a name’s popularity (myself included!), so it would be fun to hear some examples of how popularity plays out unexpectedly in the real world.
The thing that brought this to mind for me recently is my daughter’s preschool class. There are only 9 children in the class and two are named Emilia, spelled like that, with an E instead of an A. I’m wondering whether one or both Emilias’ parents specifically used that spelling because they were concerned about the popularity of Amelia. And now here they are, with two Emilia-With-An-“E”s.
I’m also thinking about my other daughter’s preschool class, which had 4 boys in it, two of whom were named Gary. I never would have imagined that I’d meet one 3-year-old Gary, much less two in the same very small preschool. The boys loved being “The Garys” and it was so cute, but I know the moms were very surprised that their boys had to be Gary Last Initial.
Anyway, I think it could be fun to hear more examples along those lines.
~Ashley
Oh, I AGREE!!
One type of story I am hoping we can avoid is the “We used Isabella in 2002 when NO ONE was using it, and then it got SO popular and now she’s always Isabella M.!” We all know about the phenomenon of noticing something everywhere AFTER it becomes significant to us. And we all know how common it is for parents, especially first-time parents, to use a name with no idea how common it is, for various perfectly understandable reasons (not knowing any babies yet; not thinking to look it up on the Social Security site and/or not knowing that information even exists; etc.). And we all know how name popularity can swoop up abruptly/unexpectedly as everyone seemingly discovers a name at the same time. Those stories, while worth telling, are not what we’re looking for today.
What we are looking for today is stories where there was an interesting difference between a name’s national/statistical popularity and its local/specific usage. Two Garys in one class, as Ashley mentions, or two Emilias. Two families both attempting to avoid the popularity of Isabella by both choosing Isadora, and the two Isadoras end up in the same classroom (with no Isabellas). Three Joeys in the same classroom, and two of them have the same middle name. Giving up on favorite name Olivia because it is too common, and using second-favorite Stella instead, and then there are two Stellas in that grade and no Olivias. Using the name John because it’s an important namesake name but feeling a little sad because it is just SO POPULAR, and then there isn’t a single other John in the entire school system. Etc.
Oh! And let’s talk about a vocab issue, before we get started: sometimes the word “class” can refer to a classroom, and sometimes to a whole grade, i.e. graduating class. I suggest we use the terms “classroom,” and “graduating class” or “grade.” (And of course if you happen to know the number of people in the classroom/grade, that is very good/fun to know, too.)
I really haven’t had any surprises with my kids’ names, except that I can’t believe how often my daughter Veronica gets called Victoria, so much that they may as well be the same name! But I work in a large high school (almost 4000 students) and I can’t believe how often in one grade we will have students with the exact same name, first and last. We always have to put a note in the student management system, so a person knows to check the student id number!
This happens to my husband Daniel, with David. (His sister is Victoria so maybe their parents just had a knack for picking this kind of name…)
As a Rebecca, I often get mis-called Rachel!
There are two Alivias in my daughter’s classroom. In my son’s class/grade, there are two Anders and two Warrens. So random!
Wait… is your daughter now in 4th grade? I was just about to comment that when my son had (has?) two girls named Alivia in his grade. I noticed when he was in pre-k, so I don’t know if it’s still true. It can’t be that common of a spelling….
There were 7 babies born in my state in 2019 with my son’s name. I KNEW FIVE OF THEM. It is a classic reasonably common name, think Edward, so we didn’t choose it for its rarity and being familiar was a perk. But I wasn’t expecting virtually every baby boy in our grad school community to be named Edward that year.
In his classroom of 8, the girls are Riley, Reece, Reagan and Raegan.
Oh my gosh!! 7 in your state and you knew 5?!??!? That is absolutely wild
Wow! That’s a wild coincidence!
I have an Elizabeth who was born in a year where Elizabeth was the number nine name that year. We almost never run into another Elizabeth. There was one in playgroup about ten years ago. It may help that there are so many nicknames for Elizabeth but I can’t think of any Lizs or Beths or etc either.
Also I am a Jennifer from the 1980s but it never bothered me so I wasn’t concerned about using a popular name. I’m just surprised that it’s been such a non-issue.
I only know of one between Eldest’s and Youngest’s grades. That’ll be 75-100 kids
I’m a Katie from the 1980s, and it didn’t bother me for decades, but now I work in a not-that-big department with 3 other Katie’s (2 about my age, 2 considerably older) and it’s making me a little bonkers.
Regarding the rise in popularity of the name Emilia, I suspect it is due to the actress Emilia Clark from the TV show Game of Thrones. The name rose in popularity from #325 in 2011 (when GOT came on the air) to #40 in 2020.
Ah, that does track. I’m the original poster and the Emilias are 3-almost-4 now, so it could definitely be a Game of Thrones thing.
How fun, can’t wait to read these!
I’m the parent of a 2006-born Ava, and she has NEVER been in a classroom or on a sports team with another Ava! On the other hand, one year there were two Jimenas on her soccer team.
Maybe I’ve missed it, but has there been a discussion about the Google-ability of names (in my view an important issue for our kids which is at odds with the unusual name ethos)? I ask this as a Tessie, which has throughout my lifetime been an EXTREMELY Google-able name, and I do not really love this tbh.
I love the Gary story! GARY!!
I work in SEO (a.k.a. making things show up in google search) and I have MANY thoughts about names and how googleable they are. Swistle, would be happy to talk to you for a post!
To my mind, I would err on the side of common names (or at least being sure to do a search for the full name in advance!). If you’re the only person in the world with your name, you will have a lifelong trail of google searches anytime your name shows up on the internet.
Some of us have a surname where this is basically inevitable anyway, even if your first name is super common.
Yeah, there’s maybe a dozen people in the entire country with my husband’s surname, and they’re all descended from, married to, or are one of 2 guys, a nephew & uncle who immigrated 50-60 years ago.
My kids are literally the only people in the world with their surname, and while I love how it represents their parents equally, I detest the loss of privacy.
Swistle, let’s talk about this more!
This is something I think about a lot. My maiden name is Italian and unique in that if you google my name, you can find my address, former salary and places of work. My married name is actually the name of a Jeopardy winner (same exact spelling) so I enjoy the anonymity/mistaken identity.
We have an Extremely Uncommon last name… could have picked Olivia, Emma, or Ava and she’ll still be the only one. It is a little concern of mine, but que sera sera.
At one point our 55 kid daycare had 3 girls named Stella (birth years between 2011-2014) and only 1 girl with a top 10 name)
My daughter’s name was in the top 40 and rising in the state we lived in when she was born. I knew of several other babies with her name, but we never encountered one in daycare or other activity. Her name is less popular in our current state, but still a top 40-75 name depending on the year. She’s the only one in our 500 kid elementary school.
My son has a name that’s consistently in the top 10 in our area. There are 2 other boys in our 500 kid school with the same name.
I have mixed feelings on Googleability… As far as I can tell, I’m the only person in the world with my first-last combination for either my maiden or married name. That’s always bothered me a little, and I’m very careful about what I put online with my full name – although there’s always a handful of records sites that list my phone number or address or family members and I’m not able to remove…
BUT, it doesn’t bother me enough to avoid that problem for my children, because it would take a pretty common name to make my very uncommon last name (I’m not sure there’s anyone in the US with this name who isn’t related to my husband within 3-4 generations) unGoogleable. Both our boy and girl options for our first child were outside the top 1000, although they do have much more common nicknames, should our children want to use those when they’re older. I almost feel like this is something I would have worried about more if I *hadn’t* experienced it myself, but I feel comfortable because it so much hasn’t been a real issue… but I do worry occasionally that it will be more of an issue one day and I’ll regret being so laissez faire about it.
I can totally appreciate the Last Name Problem, as my maiden name is pretty unusual as well. It appears the best “solution” is to serendipitously have a famous person with your exact same name! Or, we just wait until we all live in the Metaverse, and then everyone just goes by their .eth name or whatever LOL.
That’s what I found! My maiden name is the same as a very major movie character, and I enjoyed being essentially ungoogleable.
I was all set to write how my daughter has two Paisleys and three Presleys in her grade, but then I looked up the SS stats and realized that Paisley and Presley are not as uncommon as I thought. There are also zero girls with a top 10 name from the year she was born, which is actually pretty crazy.
I carefully selected my first two kids names to be outside of the top 300, but they both skyrocketed after that and are now just outside of the top 100. It made me less worried about picking a unique name for my other kids because I can’t control what the rest of America names their kids.
I have a 2010 Julia, which was 55th most popular name nationally that year. I was not anticipating that in her grade of approx 90 girls, four of them would be named Julia! This mid-70s Amy doesn’t mind – it’s just very funny to me how regionally popular it ended up being
Also I am a vintage Jennifer, born during the 14 years Jennifer was #1. 10% of the girls in my class in high school were Jennifers. However as an adult I have never worked with another Jennifer (three companies in three states.) I know one Jen socially, but not a single parent at school, kids sports, or work colleague is a Jennifer.
Wow! I’m a 1980s Jennifer & we are everywhere in my area. I was one of 4 Jennifer’s of 16 moms in my so s PreK. The Jennifer’s were born in a 10yr span. I’m always in the company of another 😂 the most was 6 of us in a small college class of 35-40.
Hahaha, I had five Jennifers/Jennys on my freshman hall alone! I also took my husband’s surname (rookie mistake) and it is one of the very common ones like Smith, so now there is actually another Jennifer Mylastname at my university. We trade emails a lot!
My name is Jennifer and in college I dated another woman named Jennifer WITH THE SAME BIRTHDAY AND SAME LAST INITIAL! And we didn’t even meet in the US although we are both Americans!
You’ve mentioned several times that the days of 5 Jennifers in a class are hugely improbable given how diverse names have become. Which I think is a great point and thus people should freely use popular names. However, there was a perfect storm in my daughter’s kindergarten class (20 kids, 12 of them girls), there were 3 Avas and then an Ava and Avery who both had gone by Ava before starting kindergarten, so in 2018, we sort of experienced the 5 Jennifers in one class scenario. I loved the solution though. Some last names repeated but they all had different middles, so they were called Ava Skye, Ava Mae, etc, which really with the full combos, make them seem like completely different names.
I also never met an Emma or Emily until I reached my 30s.
Edit: Avalyn* and Avery
I feel like school administrators should make sure this doesn’t ever happen somehow??? Is that unrealistic?
I think using the middle names is a fun idea. We had two Lily’s in my daughter’s playgroup one year and they went by Lily plus their middle names (which both happened to also be flower names, which was kind of cute). I agree that it differentiates them more, and is more fun than using the last names. I’m a 1980s Ashley and almost always had to be Ashley Last Initial, I think I would have much preferred to use my distinctive middle name.
Love this discussion already! I have an Agnes, and know there are at least two more in our metro area in her age-bracket (under 5 years old), courtesy of my midwife whose assistant has an Agnes and knows the third one personally.
Had our 2009 baby been a girl, he would have been named Annika…and would have been the second Annika in the infant room at our child care center.
I grew up with an Ashleigh, born in 1966. That name wasn’t even in the top 100 in 1966! And I never encountered another one until I graduated college in 1988, when I met a boy Ashley and my coworker had a girl Ashli.
We picked Henry in 2004 for our January 2005 baby. That’s the last year it was outside the top 100. In our small rural town there is only 1 Henry every 4 years or so. So there’s a junior, an 8th grader, and a 4th grader. If there are more who are younger, I haven’t noticed them during tball registration.
Our Henry actually goes to high school at a lab school that pulls from the whole county and there are loads of Henrys, but the other Henrys are all Asian while we are white. I was talking to a mom at speech and debate sectionals and she said, There are two Henrys on the team and mine is a freshman. I said, oh I have the other Henry! She looked at me and said, so there are three Henrys on the team and mine is a freshman.
My name was number 5 the year I was born and I made it to college before I had another Samantha in my classroom or even in my grade! One memorable year we had 4 girls named Emily in my history class of 18 people, but I was always the only Samantha
I have been shocked at the number of my girls’ friends (born 2006-2010) who are named Samantha. I feel like it’s a very 80s name. I can think of at least 4 I know.
In the preschool class one year ahead of my kid’s, there were eighteen children. Three of the girls were named Lucy and three of the boys were named Declan. That seemed pretty remarkable to me, a third of the class named Lucy or Declan.
Oh and in the same class there was an Anna Grace and an Amelia Grace, both of whom went by first and middle.
We transferred schools mid year last year. There were 7 5th grade classrooms in the school. My daughter had three Zoeys, two Paisleys, and one Pazlee in her class. It struck me as odd, but maybe not? I think I’d probably try to distribute the names more evenly but who knows.
(My kids all have names not in the top 1000 because I was a Melissa of the 80’s. Each of them has never run into a name twin. Each has never gotten an off the rack souvenir key chain.)
My name was #12 in the year I was born, and I’ve hardly ever come across another person with my name. In middle school there was another girl with the same name in my grade, but we never actually had any classes together. And currently there is one other woman with my name (a year or two younger) in my Bible study group. But I’ve never had another person with my name in a classroom or a job, even with a name that was just barely outside the top 10! So my own experience has definitely made me feel better about considering popular names for my (hypothetical future) children.
I have one! My 9th grade daughter’s name is Sophia and she goes exclusively by Sophie. When we picked the name, we knew it was popular but used it anyway because we love it. Out of the 400 students in her grade, she is the only Sophia (much less Sophie). But the same group of 400 kids has 11 boys named Ryan!
I’m surprised there are so many Ryans. I think of that as more of a “dad name” now, in that I meet a lot of parents named Ryan but rarely any kids named Ryan these days.
I love this phenomenon, and I use it as an example every time a person mentions that they love a name, “but it’s too popular”. You never know!
I’m raising two young kids right now, so we’re immersed in the name world, and I’ve always been a name enthusiast, so I’m familiar with the SSA lists and the trends. I’m fascinated by the fact that I’ve never met one Ava. Not a single one. I like the name, I know it’s popular, but it just doesn’t exist in my social circle at all. We’re in the US Midwest.
We do know two Atticuses, two Clarks, two Junipers, and three Marys.
Another thing that happens all the time is that people pick an individual name that isn’t high on the charts, but neglect to consider the differing spellings or the sound families. That I can think of, we know 17 girls whose names start with El-, and 7 that start with Ev-. Several of those are different spellings of Ellie and Everly.
I have a friend whose daughter is named Ellison Starts-with-B-and-rhymes-with-Lawyer. She gave her a backpack with “E. (Last name)” on it and sent her off to kindergarten. It’s a relatively small class (let’s say, a dozen kids or so). In that class is a little girl named Ellen, whose last name also starts with B and rhymes with Lawyer. There is one letter difference in the last names. My friend would never have guessed that that backpack would not have been sufficient, given that the last name is not common, and the chances of those two girls’ names being so similar.
I was born in ’86 in Arizona and named Ashley. Hugely popular name at the time of my birth and my parents had no idea. Typical story. But we knew no other Ashleys at the time. After kindergarten, we moved to Texas. Suddenly, there were Ashleys EVERYWHERE. It was normal that I was one of three in a classroom. In one of my classes, there were three Ashley Ws, so we all had to go by our last names as if they were our firsts. I hated it. But in high school, we moved to Kansas. While there were plenty of Ashleys still in my graduating class, I was usually the only one in a classroom. And I moved to another Kansas town in adulthood, where I vaguely know two other Ashleys, but we’re not generally in the same circle. All of that to say, even when a name IS crazy popular, like it was in the days before internet and no one knew it was popular, it still ebbs and flows throughout life. I’ve been one of many, and I’ve been the only. It’s hard to know what a child might experience ahead of time.
Always pick the favorite name!
I am a Katherine of the 80s and wanted to give my kids not-so-common names. My daughter, born in 2013, is Tegan. It has never been higher than rank 780 since 2000. We met one nurse at an urgent care named Tegan when she was about 2; other than that, we didn’t know any (spelled any way). Then, when she was 4, we moved to a new state. One of the 10 other kids in her new pre-K class was a boy Tegan, which has only been in the top 1000 names one time since 2000. It was nuts.
It’s funny that the letter writer is named Ashley, because I was just thinking how funny it is that, even though Ashley was the second most popular name in the year of my birth, I only ever knew one Ashley (and she used a spelling variant) in all my years of schooling. But, we had I think five Kates/Katies in my grade of 50-ish girls, as well as three Jacquelines — not uncommon names, but highly overrepresented for their popularity at the time. And then after I graduated I don’t think I ever met another Katie or Jacqueline my own age again!
If my son had been a girl, we were going to name him Juniper. Now, in my office of 15 coworkers, there are two parents of Junipers. Looking it up now I see that Juniper is on a big rise, I thought it was just sneaky popular cause people like nature names where I live, in the PNW.
I am always noticing this type of thing! My 8th grade daughter has 44 boys and girls in her band. Five of the boys are named K/Connor! For her birth year the name Connor ranked 50th in our state. And I noticed in the 7th grade band of a similar size there are no Connors at all but 3 boys named Nicholas plus a Nicole. She told me her band Director has fun calling on Connor one, Connor two, etc.
I also frequently read name blogs where prospective parents are reassured that even the number one name is unlikely to repeat in an entire elementary school. Yet my son James currently is in a classroom of about 25 with two other boys named James. James was ranked #15 in our state when he was born.
Thought of another one.
My son is named Rory. It was in the 400s on the SSA list the year he was born. But he started going to a weekly church gathering when he was 3, and there was another boy named Rory. 2 Rorys in a class of maybe 30 kids.
I also have a son named Rory and your story reminded me of one of my own. My kids are older, so when my Rory was born, his name was in the 600s in popularity. Most people had never heard of the name. However, when one of my other kids started at a new school, there were TWO Rorys in his classroom. It’s a much more common name now but this was about ten years ago, so it was quite surprising to hear the name on not only one, but two other boys.
I picked the name Rory when I was a child and read it in an old book about a family living in the 1940s who has a son with the nickname Rory.
When we named our son Griffin in 2006 (ranked 256 that year), I thought there would never be another Griffin in his class! Our elementary school had something like 15 or 17 classes of each grade at that time and in 3rd grade he had another Griffin in his class. They have not had a class together since, but the other Griffin is still in our district. I used to sub in our district and I have not come across another Griffin in our district. That same year he had girls in his classroom named Avery, Annie, Addison, and 2 named Alexis.
In my son’s class of 12, there are two Isadoras! He’s the very common James and is the only one. My sister works in a preschool and had two Jordans.
I wrote to Swistle years ago about this exact issue! My daughter is named Fiona, which was only ranked about 200 for girls in the U.S. when she was born. We chose it, in part, because it was not popular. Then we met four or five other babies with her name in our Chicago suburb! It was very upsetting, at the time.
A few years later, we moved to a different suburb (still Chicagoland). All of a sudden, she’s the only Fiona in her school. It’s weird how names get concentrated in certain areas. It was a nice side effect of our move!
My 2018 baby is called Sylvia, and I’ve only ever met one other child named Sylvia. But I met her mom at a newborn support group when I was about 5 weeks postpartum and absolutely exhausted. I remember asking other Sylvia’s mom what her baby’s name was, and when she said “Sylvia” blinking at her and thinking “did I accidentally ask her what my baby’s name is??” At any rate, it was more of a bonding experience than anything – we’re still friends!
I have a 4 year old Oliver and fully expected to run into many. He was named for a family member, so we stuck with it despite popularity. We see it in media a lot (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie show is a favorite because the boy is named Oliver), but no one in real life. In fact, other parents always comment, “That’s such a great and unique name! Where’d you come up with it?”
Oh, but the one odd anomaly is close family friends of my mom’s twin sister. First grandbaby, same age, has the same first AND middle name, Oliver Henry!
Oh, oh, I have one!
My first son is named Victor. He was born in Texas, in a city that’s 35% Latino, and went to a Spanish immersion preschool and elementary. No Victors ever, in any class or grade, except for him.
We moved to Minnesota, to a city that’s not quite 10% Latino, and enrolled him in the Spanish immersion school up here. He’s one of two Victors in his class – there’s at least 1 Victor in just about every grade – his little brother is now good friends with a Victor in HIS class – the gym teacher and one of the student teachers are all also named Victor. He loves having a whole squad of Victors and I am thrilled to see the name is still in rotation at least in THIS community.
Hence my son explaining very seriously to his friends back in Texas that Victor is a VERY popular name in Minnesota.
When my younger son was an infant, there were 4 other babies named Miles in the infant room with him. Miles was not even in the top 100 for our state that year. Myles was also not in the top 100.
My older son’s name was number 11 for our state the year he was born. He’s now in college and we’ve met a total of 3 other kids his age with that name, 2 of them were solely called by nicknames.
My Hadley was born in 2008 and that name was 419th on the soc sec list. I had never met another Hadley. We promptly discovered FIVE HADLEY’s in our neighborhood as she started school and summer camps!! And two friends of friends named their daughters Hadley! My 2006 baby, Brooke – didn’t meet another Brooke until high school. And everyone misspells it Brook which I had never run across either!!!
My name, just this spelling, has been in the Top 50 since the 80s when I was born, but my whole growing-up life people reacted to it as if it were EXTREMELY strange/exotic/unheard of, and the first time I met another was in college. Now it’s a bit more common, and I’m grateful to Ariana Grande (and now Ariana DeBose) for helping people figure out how to pronounce it finally. 😅 All that to say, I don’t know, just pick the name you like and don’t worry about popularity. You never know what you’re going to find.
When my daughter was born (pre-internet era) I gave her my mother’s middle name, Avanell, as her middle. I’d always assumed it was a made-up name since I’d never found it in print. Within three months of her birth, I met a woman named Avanell, found out a friend’s aunt was named that, and read that an Avanell won our state’s lottery.
Love this topic and clearly everyone else does too! I have a few anecdotes. (And I also roll my eyes hard when parents bemoan that someone else chose the super rare name they chose – happened so many times with Isla and Benjamin…)
My nieces were going to a small Francophone elementary school in a small community while I was pregnant with my second. I had Daphne on the list. I happened to look over their school directory (who prints out names of all students in a school anyways?!) and there were 8 Daphnes in a school of less than 200 students. That turned me off Daphne, even though we didn’t live in the same community. Since then I have not met one single Daphne. However, the name we did choose, thinking it was fairly rare (it’s in the 700s on the SSA site, but I’m in Canada so can’t truly compare) was then used as a nickname for a friend’s baby six months after ours was born. And BECAUSE we’d used it, they felt it wasn’t ‘too weird’ to use. So now there are two girls with the same name in my larger social circle, which was my nightmare, but the girls think it’s pretty funny.
In my baby group in 2013 with my eldest, there were six Theos in a group of 25 babies. A few were Theodore, but all went by Theo. At that time, the name wasn’t in the Top 100 in BC, though it’s always been much more popular here than the States. However, since then my daughter hasn’t had a single Theo in her classes through elementary school yet.
I don’t know a single baby / child Emma, Amelia, Evelyn, Ethan or Henry.
Can we talk some time about common sibsets? I know at least three sets of sisters Harper & Finley, and SEVEN sets of Oliver & Benjamin brothers!
I would like to check if Emilia is in fact a variant of Amelia or its own name? I always thought it was a name in its own right. Sure it sounds like Amelia, so maybe people are choosing it to be more original, and to get to the popular nickname Emmy, but it’s not like Alivia.
Seven Oliver/Benjamins! That’s amazing.
I know more than one family that have used both Elliot and Oliver for first and/or middle names. Those sounds seem to go together for a lot of people.
I know at least three girls named Olivia Grace.
The one Oliver I know doesn’t have a brother named Benjamin… but his mother did call *him* Benjamin for no apparent reason for his first few months! That wasn’t a name under consideration, and they didn’t know any other Benjamins his age. She couldn’t figure out why it kept coming into her head, lol.
The Olivers that I know with brothers are Oliver and Benjamin and Oliver and Theodore!
My daughter’s ballet class of 10 has three Noras. I think they all go to different schools though…
My son had 3 Nora’s & 1 Norah in 16 kid PreK class.
My daughter has a name that was relatively uncommon when we named her but has since skyrocketed. So unsurprisingly we mainly meet younger kids and toddlers and with the name although there was one in her preschool class.
But what I’m here to say is that in her year group of 51 kids – only 20 of whom are girls – there are two called Faith! I just checked, and in the UK in 2015-16 around 100 girls in the whole country received the name Faith each year. And now they get to be Faith X and Faith Y! Madness. Also two Freyas and two Sebastians but that isn’t surprising here.
I went to a small elementary school with maybe 75 kids per grade. We had 4 Kellys – two boys and two girls! We called them “Kelly D” etc (last initials).
My maiden name is quite unusual and there is one family (not related to us) in our metro area of 1 million that we know of, from phone books/googling – the girl ended up being several grades below me at my small private school. So weird. Everyone thought we were related.
I also have a pretty unusual combo of ethnicities in terms of my first name and maiden name, yet I am un-Googleable because there happens to be an accomplished musician with the same strange combo of names.
That is interesting about your Un-googleable name!
I have a pretty unusual (not unheard of but not common!) first name and a moderately average last name. There is a very well-known artist, who had a well-publicised relationship with another VERY well known artist (like, his stuff sells at auction for tens of millions) who happens to have the same name as me! So if you google me, you get 20 pages of her first, which is super helpful. Unfortunately both of my kids will have such an unusual double barrelled last name that even if I’d named them Ava and Charlie I think it’s unlikely they would have a namesake. But you never know!
We named our son Nico, and while I’ve heard of other Nico’s recently, the two boys I know of have unique spellings (Niko and Nikko).
We have a 2012-born Barrett. Never met another Barrett before that, never knew of anyone with that name. In the first 8 years of his life, we had only encounter two other kids with that name- one who was being yelled at in Ikea and another at a park. We moved to a new state and there are many more Barretts. One on his swim team, and there seems to be at least one on every football team he plays. Same with the name Easton, which we considered for our third son. We had never met an Easton and here (TX) they are everywhere.
We finally took a minute to figure it out- both baseball and guns are extremely popular, so it makes sense that both names would be more heavily used.
I was one of 5 Amandas in my graduating class of 134 in 1997. Since then I have worked with less than 5 other Amandas in more than 20 professional working years. However, while growing up, the only Margaret I knew was my grandmother. At one point about 8 years ago I worked with 5 Margarets: a 60-ish Marge, Peggy in her 40s, two 30-something Maggies, and an early 20s woman who went by her middle name of Quinn.
The high school class ahead of me (so class of 1996) was about 45 kids. There were 9 different girls with Kristen type names…..Kristin, Kristen, Christie, Kris, Chrissy, Christina, etc. In my 1997 class there were 70 kids and we had no similar names, but two DeeAnn’s.
I live in a small Texas town, but it is a city and most people who want land live in the outskirts. A friend was bemoaning how they moved to a smaller town in the outskirts of the area so they could afford more land and her son who is named COY had another boy in his kindergarten class also named Coy. Coy has ranked on the SS top 1000 one time, and that time was 2003 and it was only 992. So I could understand her surprise. But, it’s probably just a localization of rural Texas people with cowboy/farming sensibilities randomly picking the same offbeat/cowboy vibe name.
In our neighborhood there were 8 babies born last year. 7 boys and 1 girl. The boys are Cam, Archer, Luke, Elliott (almost a Luke), Franklin (almost named George), George and Lucas. The girl is Grace (she would have been George if she was a boy). I’m the mom of George, it’s 133 nationally and yet there were almost 3 born in our 3 block neighborhood last year. I think it’s a great name and had there been 3 born I would have found it humorous. I’m an 80’s Sarah, popularity doesn’t scare me.
I have a 2013 Henry. His grade (approx 80 kids in a large city ?) has at least four Henrys! I did not expect that at all. My 2010 son at the same school has no Henrys in his grade.
I love these stories! I can’t wait to read them all!!
Daniel was in the top 5 the year we used it for our son and had been in the top 10 for a long time, so we expected to encounter plenty of kids named Daniel. But, believe it or not, we have only ever encountered one other kid named Daniel and one dad who goes exclusively by Danny.
We named our second son Peter when it was ranked very near 200. It’s a family name and we felt strongly about using it, but I secretly feared he’d grow up resenting me for giving him an old man name. Well, many years later, we encounter Peters all the time. Little baby Peters, dad Peters, grandpa Peters everywhere. One year two kids on the soccer team and one of the coaches were all named Peter!
I have a Peter, he’s almost 3. and I knew a Peter growing up (a cousin) those are the only Peters I’ve ever met. I live in Central Texas. Perhaps if I were Catholic I’d meet more of them, as I know that name is having a resurgence with the Catholic mommy bloggers, but I’m not and it doesn’t seem to get much use in my circles. (which is a pity, because it’s a great name!)
I live in central Texas, I AM Catholic, and I know at least seven little Peters!!!
50 year old Paige here; 2 of us for a few years in my class in my tiny private school, then never met another one until adulthood. I’ve only met maybe 10 in my life, so so weird that I was Paige A for a few years.
I am loving this discussion! We have a Nora born 2010, we had no idea how popular the name was when we chose it, it was a last minute switch from the name we thought we were going to use. I was chagrined when new mom fog wore off and I learned how commonly it was being used. I’ve been quite surprised that we have not once met another Nora in her age range in real life!
I have a child named Patrick. Nice, classic name, but not super popular.
There is a kid ONE GRADE BEHIND at the same elementary school with the same first and last name!
That’s surprising! I feel like it’s rare to meet a Patrick these days.
I had roughly the same 22 kids in my elementary school class for all 5 years… we had 2 repeat names in the class, Andrew and Caroline. Looking at name popularity for the decade we were born (I couldn’t get more granular than that, but I bet someone could if they wanted), Andrew makes sense as it was the #7 boy name for the 90s. Caroline was top 100, but barely at 97. Glancing at the list and going off my memory of my classmates’ names from 20 years ago, I don’t think any of the girls in our class had a name higher than #23 in popularity! (Perhaps that would change if we looked at 1990-91 only!)
One of my college roommates lived with three Sara’s, two Caroline’s, and… two Ki(e)rstens! This was out of 13 college roommates. Her roommate Kirsten was the first person I’d ever met who pronounced her name the same as me. (And the only other I’ve met was the midwife who delivered my son!)
I am also a Kiersten! I’ve met 4 other people who pronounce it the same was: 1 other Kiersten, 1 Kirsten, 1 Kïrsten, and 1 Kirstin. My name is always misspelled and mispronounced but I can understand why with all of the vowel options lol
In my son’s kindergarten class of 12 kids, there are two kids named Myles (one of them being my son)! I know Miles has increased in popularity a lot, but I was surprised to see the spelling variant we used pop up in such a small classroom!
For my other son, there were only 500 babies given his name in the whole country in his birth year and we ran into another of them randomly on the street of our small city.
My kid went to a small private school and in one grade of 10 kids there were two boys named Gavin (born about 2008) Weird!
When my dad was in elementary school (1950’s) he was in a class (I think 3rd grade) where there was two of each name. It was in the newspaper! I saw the article & they had them all paired up in the photo, 2 Linda’s, 2 Judy’s, 2 John’s, etc.
Annika is usually 300-ish or higher on the SS name site, but here in Minnesota it is typically under the 100 mark. There is a lot of Swedish/ German/ Norwegian ancestry here so it makes sense – and it sounds good with a lot of the common surnames here.
Still, although we’ve met a couple, they haven’t all been in the same class. One other on a soccer team, and I think there are 4 in our elementary school of 900-ish.
My daughter born in 1988 is Elaina and there has never been another one in her class or school. However in her 1st year at school in a class with 12 girls born in 87/88 there were Dayna, Raina, Alayna, Shayna and a Nayna.
That’s my name! I have met one other adult and a couple kids (I’m an educator). However, the other adult has my same profession and lives one town over so it is very confusing for many families who wonder if they’re seeing the same Ms Elaina in the hospital AND school!
When I was in secondary school in the mid 2000s (UK), my year group had Clare, Clair and two Claire M.s! The two Ms were continually known as Claire Surname. Since I left school I haven’t met another Claire (any spelling) in my age bracket, must’ve been a bubble!
On a slightly different note: I just got my son’s soccer team roster. It’s online and at the top it says “your kids teammates are” then lists the rest of the team, with first and last name in two columns. I am still not sure if the list is First Name Last name or Last Name First name because they are all surnames. Except my kid who is not on my list. Is it Glen Cole, Hudson Campbell and Abel Graham or Cole Glen, Campbell Hudson and Graham Abel? The whole list is like this!!!
Haha, that’s a fun coincidence!
My oldest has a super popular name. Consistently top 5 and some years #1 in our state for many, many years. Currently, he is the only one in his grade at his elementary school. There are 5 neighborhood schools in our town and we are at the largest school. There are about 300 children per grade in the town and we only know of one other with his name at one of the other schools.
Coincidentally, our second and third kids’ names had the same ranking the years they were born (mid-100’s). We have met 2 other children ever with our middle child’s name and they were not the same age and met randomly out and about, not at school or town events. It seems to be a pretty uncommon name. Our youngest’s name we hear everywhere. Our neighbor across the street’s grandson has the name. There was another child in his preschool class with the name. There is one on his sibling’s baseball team and another in the same grade as his sibling in their elementary school. When he was born, the nurse told us it was the most common name they had been hearing but it was ranked in the mid-100’s at the time.
We find the most popular name for boys in our town is Andrew. All 3 of our kids have at least one Andrew in their class at all times. It is not even in the top 15 names for any of the years our kids were born.
My son is Noah from 2010- I think it was #1. There is only one other in his grade (120ish) and it’s a female spelled Noa. They both have the same last initial tho.
My other son has two Tate’s in his grade (120ish).
I was actually going to use the name Noah as my example as well. We loved the name, but worried it would be too popular (in 2008) so ultimately chose something different. I have yet to encounter a Noah in any of my sons classes or grade or even sports. Where are all the Noah’s?!
I’ve had duplicate kids named Henry, Miles, Theo/Teddy, Jack, Olivia, Emma, Ava, and Grace in my classes throughout the years which isn’t surprising based off of popularity but nothing prepared for 5 kids named Asher in a class of 16 or 3 Wyatts in a group of 10. I was truly shocked by the popularity pocket of those names.
My son is Benedict, which is not even in the top 1000. Right after we chose his name, we found out that our friends (I think the only other close friends who were expecting at the same time)… had also chosen Benedict! This is out of maybe 10 friends of ours who have kids so far. We’re Catholic, so the bubble is a lot less unexpected – I’m wondering now if Benedict is actually in/poised for a big spike among Catholics as an alternative to the very popular Benjamin (although personally Benjamin is not my style at all, and we don’t call him Ben).
I find Catholic name bubbles in general very interesting. At my husband’s last church, he knew 2-3 Fulton’s among his friends’ 4-5 kids. Growing up (late 90s kid), I knew multiple Philomenas, several John Pauls, and countless Marys. Anne Marie, Dominic, Gabriel, and Veronica also seemed a bit disproportionately common (and in general there were a lot more traditional names like Elizabeth and fewer modern trendy names like Avery. I knew an Ave (Ah-vay), but not an Avery).
I wanted Benedict so much as a middle for our last son! I DO think that name is headed for a comeback, and I’m not Catholic.
A lot of my friends are Catholic though and I think Zelie is a wildly popular in their circles and almost never seen otherwise.
I totally agree that Benedict is ready for a larger revival (and it does seem to be rising fairly rapidly – roughly doubling in the last decade). Pope Benedict and Benedict Cumberbatch have made it more familiar and given it associations other than Benedict Arnold, making it way more usable, and its style is somewhere between “elegant” names like Sebastian and “clunky” names like George, with a familiar nickname that’s currently very popular (although, interestingly, out of the 4 Benedicts I’ve met, 2 go by Benny and none go by Ben). Yet still… it’s way down low on the charts.
And yes on Zelie! I haven’t actually met one yet, but it was high on our list and I’ve seen several on Catholic blogs. It totally fits the trend of Ellie/Ella names and also high Scrabble value names, while also being a traditional “real” name, which seems to have fit a real sweet spot.
I would love to see a top 100 names of practicing Catholic families…
I have a Louise (born 2018), we live in a town <8000 and there is another Louise who will likely be in her same grade 🤣 I know the other Louise goes by LOU and ours prefers to be known as Weeze.
This is a little different, but as a teen I wrote a story about a girl named Avery Isabelle Osborne, thinking that it was a bit of a goofy name due to its singsong-y rhythm (the other character in the story was named Julia Jeranna Jones). Then a year or two later, I met a girl named… Avery Isabelle Osborne!
Oh and a really old one. But my great grandparents were John and Anna. Great grandpa John’s parents were John and Anna. One set of his grandparents were John and Anna. Great grandma Anna’s parents were also John and Anna.
Last summer I was signing up my daughter (then 4) for the summer reading program at our local library. The librarian repeated my daughters name as a question after I said it.
“Yes,” I replied. “Gloria is kind of an unusual name.”
“Oh it’s not that,” she replied. “It’s just that the last family I registered also had a young Gloria.”
Hahahaha.
My oldest is John, we exclusively call him Jack. He was born in 2008. When he took preschool tennis lessons, there were 2 other Jacks out of the 6-8 kids who played.
SINCE then, he’s not had any Jacks on his sport teams, in his scout groups, and there was 1 in his grade in 4th-6th. There were about 40 kids in the grade. I think 1 year they were in the same class.
There are 4 Leslies in my department at work. Out of 14 people total. 2 in the 60ish range and 2 in the mid-forties, including me!
I was always raised that Leslie was the traditional male spelling and Lesley is the female? My grandad’s middle name was Leslie and my mum’s middle is Lesley. Is this a UK/US thing or is Lesley dominant for women in the US too and it’s even more unusual to have 4 in one department?
I’ve not seen Lesley, only Leslie, though that doesn’t necessarily mean a great deal. I’m an American from our North East.
Interesting! I’ve known several female Leslies and one Lesley… who is from England! So maybe it’s an English preference to spell it that way??
Maybe it is! I looked at the name data from the 90s onwards (it’s in glorious chart form at https://names.darkgreener.com/ if anyone wants a nosy) and Leslie for girls seems to be almost unheard-of in the UK – 5 baby girl Leslie’s in ’96 and even less since – but both variants are almost completely unused these days. No Leslie or Lesley girls at all last year.
I am a teacher and last year, in my 11th grade English class (13 students), I had Cheyanne, Cheyene and Cheyenne. They are the only three students in my high school who have this name, they are all in the same graduating class and last year they were all in the same section of English.
My name is Ann (not in the top 20 for a girl born in 1976) and my husband is Dan (#10 for a boy in 1976). My same age cousin is also Dan and he also married a woman named Ann.
I am also Annie (Ann) married to Daniel… we know so many couples who are Ann/Anna/Ana and Daniel! So strange
One of my parents has two cousins named Debbie married to men named Scott.
Also, I have great-grandparents named Louis and Etta, and my husband has great-grandparents named Lewis and Eda. Etta and Eda are pronounced differently, but still!
Oh, I have that same thing! I’m Kerri Beth, married to a Mike. My husband’s cousin is Carrie Beth (we pronounce them the same), also married to a Mike!
My daughter’s classroom (well, virtual classroom …) last year included Maya (her), Jaya, Kaia, and Rukayah (all rhyming) out of about 14 kids.
My daughter, Annie Laurie is married to…………..Daniel!
My now 25-year-old daughter, whose name is Greer, had another Greer (also a girl) in her kindergarten class. They went to school together through 8th grade, then on to separate high schools. They now both happen to live (separately) in Chicago. Still friends!
This isn’t as absolutely wild as some of the stories here, but I named my daugher Fern this fall and though it’s gaining in popularity I thought I was a bit ahead of the curve. There were 3 Fern’s last year in our province (4.5 million people). The VERY next baby announcement I received/saw on facebook a few weeks after my daughter was born was from an acquaintance who I am not close with but we run in the same social circle: Fern. We’ve both since been invited to the same baby group which will consist of 5 babies.
Just wanted to say that Emilia and Amelia are filed VERY DIFFERENTLY in my mind and I would never ever have thought of them as even related names! They don’t sound the same, one is clearly related to Emily, etc.
Same! I can hear that they sound similar if I think about it a lot, but they don’t belong in the same category in my head either.
These are so fun to read! Thank you for posting my question.
Oh, I thought of another one! I substitute teach and last week I was in a 4th grade classroom. There was an Alisha, a Jaylisha, and an Elisha-Lily. That was the heaviest concentration of Alicia-type names in one class, but in general I feel like I meet a lot of Alicia variants in this town. And according to the SSA database the highest Alicia-type name I could find was only in the 400s. Definitely seems like some kind of bubble, because before moving here I don’t think I knew any Alicias under the age of ten, and I worked in education in my previous location, too, so I encounter a ton of kids daily.
In the early 2000’s, in the small country elementary school my daughter attended there were 4 girls in her class. The other 3 were Kayleigh, Kiley and Kelly.
Piggy-backing on all the people mentioning couples named Dan & Ann…
My great-grandparents were named Rex & Ruth. My husband’s great-aunt & great-uncle are also Rex & Ruth. Seemed like an unusual coincidence.
Rex and Ruth is my new fantasy boy/girl twin set!! (I already had boy/girl twins and before we were sharing the names we were thinking of, I joked to my mom that we would name them Rocco and Rosie…)
I have two robot vacuums, and they are named Rocco and Rosie!
(Rosie stopped working, so we purchased Rocco. That must have angered Rosie because she started working again! haha!
I am an early 80s Jennifer, and as we all know, there are….a lot of us.
At my last company I was very improbably the ONLY Jennifer (or Jen, or Jenny) at all of corporate headquarters (about 700 people who were basically my age).
At my current company there are the expected number of Jennifers but I got used to being the only one and think it’s weird! It’s not weird! It was weird BEFORE! It’s not weird NOW!
In 2019 I told my parents I was going to name my 4th baby Miles and they were shocked. Even though it was ranked around100, my mom, who is a postpartum nurse and cares for 10 or so new babies every week for the last 15 years (who has met more than one “abcde” and many other unusual names) had NEVER cared for a baby Miles in her career. That has got to be a weird non-Miles anomaly pocket!
I’m in the Miles pocket! I know so many boys named Miles, Elliott (of all spellings) and Theodore that I’m always shocked they aren’t more popular, ranking-wise.
We named my daughter Vivian with the expectation it would be a bit more rare (also I have a very large family so a lot of potential favorite names were “taken”) but the very first friend she made at the park next to our house was Vivian. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All of these comments are confirming my suspicion that name distribution and popularity has a lot more to do with your socio-economic situation than your state or even the country.
This isn’t quite on topic, but I originally FOUND SWISTLE from, let’s see, this old post about the name Evelyn. I was thinking about having kids, and what I might name them, and hubby and I had a meet-cute that involved an Evelyn, so we considered it. But that post made me have second thoughts, which I have not regretted. We ended up giving our girls names that are also from that “popular 100 years ago” trend, but much more unusual. So much so that I am, annoyingly, not going to share them. But Evelyn is part of my Swistle Origin Story.
I love this thread! I am a teacher and I continually marvel at all the name clusters I encounter. I have never had more than two Olivias or Sophias in a class but I have had:
4 Claires
4 Carolines
4 Margarets
4 Graces
A class where fully half the girls were some spelling of Katherine or Kate
2 Virginias–twice!
2 Paulines
2 Rosemarys
2 girl Graysons
In my hall in college there were two Teresas who used the full name and two Victorias who both went by Vicky. I grew up in the seventies but never knew an Amanda or a Melissa. For a while it seemed like all my friends were using Nora and then it switched to Lily.
I’m 30 but I grew up on a culdesac of 17 houses that had a Kelly, Callie, 2 Katies, and a Kelsey all within 15 months of each other.
I also went to elementary school with 2 Justines who were in the same class of 25 for 6 years. I had the name Justine filed in my head in the same category as the 4 Ryans, only to have never encountered it again!
My young daughter knows 4 boys named Declan. I just checked and it’s ranked just outside #100. You would think it’s top 5 if you were looking at her peers.
My friend and I both have two girls. We found out years into our friendship that both of our theoretical boy names was Declan!
Declan is very popular where I am in NC for many ages. I know of multiple (more than 5) from 10yrs old & younger.
My older son’s name was in the top ten for boys in our state in 2009, so I was hesitant to use it for him (born January 2010), but it was the only name my husband really wanted to use so we did. He’s only had a kid in his grade (not even the same class) with his same first name once, for part of a school year – apparently it was popular statewide but not in our part of the state! The name I picked for his brother (born 2013) was pretty popular when the first kid was a baby (there were 2 in his baby story time group) but we’ve yet to meet another local kid his own age with the same name. I feel like we lucked out!
My brother’s name is Judah. It wasn’t in the top 1000 until several years after his birth. Now it’s in the top 200. An acquaintance of mine recently had a baby and named him Judah…with the same middle name as my brother. It was surprising as I’d only sporadically encountered other Judahs out in the wild, all at least a decade younger than my brother.
Also random, but I have an aunt named Exa and a friend named Ilia. Super uncommon names, but in the last five years or so both names have been used for popular makeup brands! So odd.
My synagogue has 3 Maxes and a Maxine between the ages of 6 and 10. I think they were all named after grandfathers or great-grandfathers who Americanized their names to Max after immigrating from Eastern Europe.
My 5yo has 3 Williams, a Wilson, and a Wills on her soccer team, and none in her classroom. There is a Susie (short for Suzette) in town who was born 2 weeks after my Susan, though they attend different schools. Suzette’s not in the top 1000 and Susan was 913 (roughly 250 kids) the year they were born, though it’s been out for the last few years.
I am a college prof so get to see names about 20 years after their initial popularity. Based on that experience, when naming my own kids my only big stipulation was that the girls’ names not end with an “a” — while I didn’t notice pockets of specific names, I couldn’t help but notice how many of them ended with that sound. Often in a class with 10 women, all of them would have different names but with the same ending sound. Olivia, Emma, Ava, Ella, Sophia, Annika, Louisa, etc. I got my wish and my daughters names end with an “ine” and an “o.”
My son is named Malcolm and we’ve come across 3 or so since he’s been born. Once we were approached by another Malcolm’s grandparents at the park when they heard us call his name. The best part? The kids shared the same birthday. It was pretty neat.
I know Evelyn is a pretty popular name these days, but at my daughter’s daycare, of 12 kids – 3 are Evelyn/Evelin! They go by Evelyn, Eve, and Evie – it’s been 7 months now and I still have no idea who is who!
There were two girls (different grades) named Ramona Schultz at my daughter’s school (of a couple hundred students). Those aren’t the exact names but I picked pseudonyms with very similar rankings to give the idea while protecting identity.
We had VERY seriously considered naming my second daughter Maeve (in fact, I think we tried it out for a few minutes after she was first born) but ultimately decided on May. At our first baby song class of about 10 kids, 2 were named Maeve and mine was May. I also overheard a mom talking at soccer practice one day saying “we thought the name Maeve was so original, but we meet them everywhere!”
I haven’t really heard it at all since those two encounters and I do still love the name Maeve!
Back in middle school (1980’s) , there were 5 boys in my class, and 3 of them were named Anthony.
Several years ago: A toddler gym class with 15 kids, 3 named Jonah (including my son).
My first year of teaching in 2015, I had FOUR Ellie B.’s in the 6th grade with 100 kids total, about ~55 of them girls. All had different formal first names (Elizabeth, Eleanor, Elle, and Ellen) but all exclusively went by Ellie their whole lives. And all had last names that started with B!!! This was at a small Catholic school, so there was really no getting around it and it was honestly nightmarish when grading, making seating charts, calling on them in class, etc.
While in the waiting area for the hairdresser, the receptionist asked for ‘Lauren’. The other woman waiting responded at the same time as me, and we were both surprised to find we shared a name. For all of the name’s popularity in 1980s/90s Australia, neither of us had met many other Laurens. I’ve never shared a class with a Lauren growing up and worked with just one other Lauren years ago, so wasn’t particularly concerned about name popularity for my own children.
In middle school in the early 00s, there were THREE Lauren Elizabeth B.s in my fairly small grade. There was also a Lauren Elizabeth M. There were no other name repetitions that year in that grade, but I guess Southerners really liked the name Lauren Elizabeth in the early 90s. Ha.
There were fewer than 10 boys named Angus in my province the year my son was born, and then two of them were in the same daycare class of 15.
My first daughter is Ge0rgina (Ge0rgie), because we wanted something a bit different from the swathes of Ella’s, Ava’s and Olivia’s. In retrospect it’s a bit of a pain for her… she’s often mistakenly called Georgia. My younger daughter is S0phie, despite my concerns that it was just so popular. But, through primary school and high school, she has always been the only one in her year level of 240 kids! She has been in netball teams with 3 Sophia/e’s though.
I’m a Marilyn who was named that after it was popular (born in the 80s). Everyone always says “oh, I have a grandma/aunt Marilyn.” But there were two Marilyns in my grade of 60 or so in elementary school, and then another Marilyn moved in during jr high and we moved all the way up through high school together!