Babynames.com has released their list of the 20 most popular names for 2010 and it is the list I view as my personal Do Not Name List.
It is not that the names are bad. They are perfectly fine, featuring the usual round-up of Aidan and Olivia. This year, Sophia is the new number one. It is a beautiful name, but it would not come within 10 feet of my child's birth certificate.
I like the idea of my children having unusual names. Not weird, mind you, but not the same one every other child has. Case in point: there are two Sophias in my daughter's preschool class alone. I really don't want her going through life known as "Big Sophia" because the other two are slightly smaller.
I say this from expereince having known two "Big Kristis" back in the day. Can you imagine?
So, while these names are perfectly lovely, I consider this the top 20 list of names I will never give to my child.
They include:
Girls:
- Sophia
- Charlotte
- Ava
- Addison
- Olivia
- Amelia
- Lilly
- Isabella
- Chloe
- Bailey
Boys:
- Aiden
- Liam
- Noah
- Jackson
- Ethan
- Caden
- Mason
- Logan
- Landon
- Oliver
Expect at least 10 of each in your baby's classes going forward!
Names are such a complicated things, but to pick a name off the most popular name list just strikes me as lazy. Think outside the box! You may get some flak for it, but hey, it is better than being called "Big" anything.
Did you use a top name for your baby?
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Comments 552
I think it's more important for you to love your child's name and name them what you want then worry about what is "popular" or not. All my kids have common names with spellings that are spelled with common sense but nice. Anyway, this list depends on where you live I don't know any Ava's where I live or Chole's but I know a lot of Taylor's, Tyler's, Mason's and Lilly's. It all depends on where you live, where you come from ect..
But for my I hated having a weird name. Tabatha is a very uncommon name and I didn't know another Tabatha until I was 17. I hated it and having a weird last name too made it really bad. My friend Rachael hated how her parents spelled her name, my other friend hated her name because it was Margret and everyone called her Maggie. No matter what we do a child might not like their name but making it more common in my opinion helps. I know Desire in my school would have really loved to change her name and so would have America and Utah! lol They HATED their named and 2 of them changed them as soon as they could.
Glad to see my oldests name (Tegrim) Will never make this list, and that my youngest boys name is falling in popularity since 2000 (Douglas) and baby girls name (Ezra, yeah, normally a boys name) isn't popular either. We didn't want common names. With DH being Named Jericho, we wanted something that we weren't going to hear all the time, unlike my name (Emily)
259 and 924 on the SS website for the year I named my boys.
Please, parents, don't get mad if others mispronounce your child's unusually spelled name! I can't tell you how many times nurses, receptionists,physicians, in our clinic have struggled to not massacre the names, only to have a parent unhappy with us! It's not our fault, and the child will pay for your choices.
When picked my boys' names ten years ago, they were NOT common. Now they're on the top list and everyone assumes I picked them due to that. Um, no. I was trying to be unique without saddling them with a totally-uncommon-never-heard-of name like mine.
As an Amy born in the 1970s....yeah, realllyyyy didn't want a common name for my kid. My daughter's name is Margaret and we call her Maggie, and her name could not possibly fit her more--it's been about 200-ish the whole time she's been alive. My son is William (named for his dad--it's his middle name) which was #10 the year I named him, but there are fewer not-weird unusal boy's names. It fits him too. He would have been Lucy if he was a girl and that's trending with creatives and hipsters.
My theory is that you should choose a name you love. If others also love it, so be it. If it's totally unique and no one else has it, so be it. My kids have Indian names (dh is south asian and wanted to give names honouring his culture) and since I was one of a billion 'Jennifers' from the 70's I thought it was a great idea. Where we live right now, they are pretty unique names. However, if we ever moved to an area with a larger south asian population, I'm totally aware that my kid could end up being one of ten 'Priyas' in her class.