[Sassy Dingo]

I know a lot of people say that while they like Jack (for eg) they would never name their child that as it is too popular - I've certainly done it. I'm 39 weeks today and when discussing names with DH I vetoed some due to popularity. I didn't actually realise though, that while Jack might be the most popular boys name in Qld, 289 babies for a whole state really isn't that much.

Kind of wish now I hadn't seen this as it has me reevaluating the names we have picked out!

Has seeing the actual number of popular names made anyone else reconsider naming their child a popular name?


Top 10 most popular baby names in Queensland in 2012:

Boys:

Jack (289 babies)
Cooper (281 babies)
William (258 babies)
Noah (240 babies)
Oliver (227 babies)
Ethan (212 babies)
Lachlan (207 babies)
Thomas (200 babies)
Liam (187 babies)
James (171 babies)

Girls:

Ruby (254 babies)
Charlotte (249 babies)
Sophie (241 babies)
Chloe (224 babies)
Isabella (205 babies)
Amelia (200 babies)
Mia (197 babies)
Emily (193 babies)
Ava (191 babies)
Olivia (189 babies)

Source:

http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/pregnancy/...0107-2cby3.html

[The 7 Dwarfs]

I wouldn't not name a child a name I liked due to popularity, however if there were 2 names I was deciding between, I'd go for the less popular name.

[la di dah]

It doesn't make any difference at all for boys as none of those names are possibilities for us. Well I guess it makes some in that if they weren't all popular some of the ones I like wouldn't be taken by close family/friends.

For girls, I only really like Emily. Ruby is interesting because I want to use an R name, but it wouldn't sound great with our surname even if it were exquisitely uncommon.

I guess it does make some difference to me as I'm happy to see some of my mainstream faves aren't top ten. But I also tend to mentally average Aussie top tens against US top tens to come up with some sort of stupid scoring system of my own invention.

The other thing for me is who I know. A top ten name isn't a dealbreaker but, unmysteriously, many of the top ten ones are taken up by family/close friends as that's just the odds.

[skylark]

Most of those have been very popular for years, so you will find there are more of them than you expect around, just not all born the same year.

[Gudrun]

I'm way beyond the naming phase but I have noticed the same thing. If I perceived a name as popular it would be struck off. However it does seem true that people are accessing a much greater pool of names than in the days of yore and that the likelihood of 4-6 whatevers in the same class is not what it was.

[TwoBubbas]

When naming my almost 2.5yr old DD we didn't name her Sophie, which we really liked, because at that time it was very popular. Instead, we named her Ruby! At that time, Ruby was just becoming popular which we didn't really realise. I'm not bothered that she has a popular name, even though she is one of three Ruby's in her class at Kindy.

[dadathome]

Outside the top 20 for the previous 5 years was a criterion for both our boys' names - a year earlier or a year later and DS9's name would have been rejected on this ground.

[becstar101]

I read a little while ago that especially for boys' names there is a greater spread of numbers. Because of the greater variety of names that people come up with, the top names are no longer so dominant.

For example, the year I was born Matthew was the most popular name in Victoria, with 1025 babies given that name. The year my son was born, his name William was the most popular, but only 623 babies were given that name. I know the number of babies born is unlikely to be the same, but I don't think it's too far off.

Despite 623 Williams his age wandering the state, we actually meet very few, I think due to it not being a popular name in our area. I know a lot more Finns Maxes and Henrys than I do Williams!

[kreme]

Generally I agree with you, when you consider a few hundred kids across a whole state then it's not that many.
However you can find clusters of names within an area, so a name feels more popular than it actually is.
And I do think that Jack is really in a class of its own in popularity. I must know 15-20 Jacks between 3 and 10 years old.

[la di dah]

Wouldn't you have to add all the Jacks, Jacksons, Johns, and half the Jacobs in the state together to get the working number of kids answering to "Jack" on the playground? That'd throw the stats out a bit, I'd think.