Do you let a name's popularity deter you? Why or why not?

So, we are about a month out from having our son (#2), and choosing his name has been all-consuming (for me. I contemplate names in my sleep..) and difficult. We originally thought to honor my husband's mother with her maiden name (which she has expressed regret at not keeping), Finlayson. We would drop the "son" and name him Finlay. Our last name is McMaster.

However, I do not exaggerate when I say Finn (in all its forms) has become a very popular baby name in the last 3 years in the little place where we live. So popular, in fact, that though we both really love Finn (and have trouble finding another name we both really love), we basically have ruled it out for the past 7 months. It was only when we broached the subject with my husband's mother this past weekend--and she was so delighted--that I began to contemplate using it despite its popularity here. And in general, began to contemplate that fascinating subject of why popularity of a name deters some parents from using it and others not in the least. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this topic.

In our case, the cons:
-feel unoriginal, even sheepish to introduce our Finlay to other Finns' moms (I'm not close friends with any of these)
-possibility of many Finns in this one's classes. (suppose he could go by Finlay there though)
-wonder if it's a 'cop-out'. (this could be because I'm a writer and like to come up with original wording/phrasing?)

pros:
--we both love the name
--it is, after all, a family name of someone we want to honor, which somehow justifies it more?
--according to the statistics Finn isn't yet as popular in the big picture as it seems to be here. And who knows where the future might take us (or all the other Finns on this island:). In fact country-wide statistics rate it it less popular than the name of our older son, Wyatt. (we didn't know any other Wyatts, here or otherwise, when he was born).

Thanks for any input, either on the subject of name popularity or on our case in particular. Our other son as mentioned is named Wyatt Patrick (My father's name), if that's of help for the larger naming picture. I also really like the name Sawyer, possibly more than Finlay, but husband is not yet sold on this name.

Great topic, SloppyArt! (Your user name makes me smile every single time I read it.)

For me, I'm more bothered (much more) by the popularity of girls' names than I am of boys' names. For example, I still love Oliver, Edward, and Nathaniel despite their popularity, but if the girls' names I love were that popular (Annabelle is sadly getting there), I'm not sure I'd still be loving them.

For me, I guess I feel that when a name become overused, especially a girls' name, it loses a chunk of its sophistication. I get tired of hearing it, so it no longer feels as sophistacted, elegant, charming...or whatever it was that attracted me to it in the first place.

I guess my take on the popularity of names is like eating candy, in that if I eat too much candy at once, it no longer tastes good, and may make me feel a bit queasy. So, instead of being excited to receive my 100th bag of gummy worms, for example, I instead simply couldn't care less---and may feel so tired of gummy worms that I want to branch out and move on to a new candy. Likewise, when a name becomes too popular, it loses its appeal to me, and I'm ready to discover a new name.

Edit: Finley has meaning to you, and I think that's more important than popularity, especially if you love the name.

Today's blog sort of broaches the subject if you're interested. :)

Personally, while I'd prefer to steer clear of names in the top 25 or so, I think it's important to take a name's popularity with a grain of salt. For one thing, because the spectrum of names is so much broader now than it was in the past, today's number one names are still shared by fewer babies than the number ones of many years ago. 18,587 baby girls born in the US last year are Emma (the number one name); but for comparison sake, in 1950, the number one name was Mary and it was shared by almost triple the number of babies born that became Emma in 2008 (51,475 Mary's). By the time you get to the 20th name on the 2008 list (Sarah), only 8,904 babies were bestowed with the name. So, perspective helps. In 2008, only 832 babies were named Finn. Taking the statisticial license (is there such thing? :) to assume (wrongly, for sure) that these Finns are evenly divided among the states, that's bout 16 Finns per state. Surely still pretty original. :)

The other thing is... many of the names that we see as today's unique and original names are tomorrow's popular names, so avoiding a name because of popularity could come back to bite you. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing: names get popular for a reason-- they're likeable! Besides, at the end of the day-- as much of a name fanatic as I am-- a person should be judged by who they are, not by their names.

Finally, having a family connection absolutely is a good reason to choose a name in spite of (relative) popularity.

I adore Finlay! It's on our list (heh), even in spite of the rising popularity of Finn.

What an interesting reply, Jill. Candy is a great universal for comparison, too. I guess I wonder at what point "many gummy worms" become "too many gummy worms"--and I think the answer must differ wildly for people (and with many variables--in your case, a few girl gummy worms go a lot further than boy ones:)

I love the name Oliver a lot too, so I'll use that to ask: might it take a family member or frequent (weekly seen) family friend named Oliver to deter you from using the name? Is it how often you say it, or hear it (or see it)? I know some people opt to use family names for their kids that they have heard all their lives..... that is one form of frequency, different than generic popularity--but in both cases the name-er gummy worm-has been eaten a lot and still chosen over other, um, candies.

Why?

Do some people hear a name like Emma or James and it sounds 'fresh' in an irresistable way to them? Does this depend on how many Emmas or James are in their daily lives? Or does fresh or unique not the most important criteria in their choosing a name? (something like familiarity or comfortable-seeming might be).

Thanks, Jennyl, for breaking down the Finn popularity for me in your thoughtful comments. I guess this little place in Canada where I live just has a Finn explosion higher than the norm. I'm off to read today's blog now.....

Thanks, Sloppy. :-) I'm glad you could relate to the candy analogy.

To answer your question, I think it's a combination of many factors that turns my love of a name into a stomach ache caused by overuse. If it was a family member or a friend who shared the name, I think my feelings about the name would depend on how I felt about the person.

For me, now that I think about it, frequency is more about how often I hear the name. I was on a walk the other day, for example, and I kid you not when I say that I heard three different mothers in three different houses shouting out to daughters named Ella playing outside. Ella, Ella, Ella...It makes me not want to hear Ella again for a while, if that makes sense. I guess it's kind of how you feel about having so many Finns in your area.

I know I've reached my limit when I feel myself being repelled by the name. With the candy analogy, it's a feeling I get where I can't eat one more gummy worm.

Some names are more immune from gummy worm sickness than others for me, because some names have more staying power for me. I think that my "staying power" names are names I've loved since I was old enough to name my dolls, which was pretty young. Because I've loved these names for so long, like Rose, Genevieve, Annabelle, Eliza, Henry, etc., I have an emotional tie to them, and it's harder for me to tire of them.

I have an emotional tie to Sophia/Sophie (it was an aunt's name), but I simply heard it too much, and, well, I now have the gummy worm sickness. I didn't hear it on family members or friends, but on children EVERYWHERE. I think it's beautiful, though, and I'm hoping I someday recover and feel like using the beautiful name again.

To me, hearing a name on one family member or friend (such as an Uncle Oliver, a boyfriend Oliver, a neighbor Oliver, or a best friend Oliver) is a lot different than hearing Oliver on an infinite number of children, over and over and over. (This hasn't happened to Oliver yet, though.)
:-)
I don't think I answered everything, so if I missed something, please let me know! :-)

I have posted about this before, so hope I don't repeat too much, but I have the same problem as you, Sloppyart. I have at most 5 weeks, and we still cannot decide on a boy's name, and popularity is definitely part of the problem. (My husband not agreeing to either of the names I propose is also a huge part of this problem!)

But back to what I've said before -- we have a Henry -- I was very concerned with name popularity, but it was ranked 110 or so when we used it, and I only knew of one or two. Turns out, three of the four boys in his first daycare class were named Henry -- now, that is surely a bit of a fluke, but it just turned out that in our circles, Henry is very popular. And as much as I didn't want to choose a popular name, its been okay . . . the Henry's use their last names with their first names a lot (none that I know of use a nickname).

I really think that the most annoying thing about a super popular name is when its kind of new or made up - like Jayden for instance. Its a name you may have never heard of your whole life, and then there's two in every class. I think you're less likely to be annoyed with a classic name like Tom or Michael, for example. And Finn sounds like that sort of name to me, just more Irish/Scottish than some in the states are used to (although I've certainly been hearing a few over the past 10 years or so).

But then, I have to ask myself how I feel about super-popular girls' names, classic as they may be -- I wouldn't say they annoy me to hear -- I just hate so much that they are so popular (thinking about Emma, Hannah, Isabel for example). I would never consider one of those, so it may be that the popularity of girls' names does bother me more than boys' names -- I'll have to think harder about why that is.

Hi, SloppyArt! I can see where you may feel uncomfortable introducing your child to a roomful of other Finn's, but I sometimes have a hard time reconciling removing a name from my list because it is very popular. I have a very common name for my age group, Lauren, but it hasn't ever bothered me that there are a bunch of Lauren's my age everywhere I go. My parents loved the name, and that is enough for me!

This is a bit of an aside, but it relates to the matter at hand, so I will indulge you. I actually have a Findlay "Fin" dog, and there was a Finnigan "Finn" in his puppy school - nobody seemed to realize that the two puppies had different names for the entire class, which is why I think it would be nice for you to call your son by his given full name instead of abbreviating to Finn. Though I felt like I hadn't been creative enough in naming my dog, I now realize that his name has special meaning to my family because he is actually named after a landmark. I don't mean to compare pet naming to baby naming, but I'm just trying to give a point of reference.

Back to the actual subject, though, it depends on the name for me. If the name has some connotation that I particularly enjoy or if it is to honor family, I think popularity doesn't matter. For instance, there are five James' in my family, and, even though the name is relatively common and plain, albeit popular, I wouldn't hesitate to use it for that reason. Additionally, if there is something that connects me to a name, such as Emma and Charlotte, both popular names for girls, being characters in Jane Austen novels or author names (Charlotte Bronte), or Olivia, being a character in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, I wouldn't hesitate to use them because 1) I love the classic elegance of the names and 2) they remind me of English literature, which I am quite fond of.

If the family connection (it is very sweet, really!) means something to you and your family, then I would go ahead and use the name despite the popularity of Finlay. Your Finn will have something the others don't have - a secret connection to his grandmother's maiden name that makes his name just that little bit more special and unique. Good luck!

Interesting discussion ...

I am more particular about rarity in a girls' name than in a boys' name, but that's probably because I grew up as a girl!

One of the things I always appreciated about my name was that it was uncommon. (BTW, my name's not really Deirdre ...) I never had another girl in my class with the same name, as so many Jennifers, Jessicas, Heathers and Lisas did. I liked that, it was one of the ways I could feel distinct.

But that being said, there were a number of other reasons I liked my name. I liked its meaning. I liked the fact that it was also the name of an important and admirable figure in national and women's history. I liked the fact that it had a bit of a royal connotation. So its relative rarity was just one of the things I liked about my name growing up (and still like). If I'd been named after a relative and had been shown how special that was by my parents, I'm sure I'd have liked that, too. (Alas, that was one distinction I did not have.)

So, my comment is that I see rarity as a virtue in a name mainly for the person who holds that name. But that being said, if a name is common but comes with other reasons for liking it, then that's great, too.

We may care about the relative popularity of girls' names versus boys' names because this might just be the sort of thing that girls pay more attention to in this culture (I'm in the US). I'm not sure about that, so maybe ask some men who grew up with common names if it bothered them at all. However, my DH has a very rare name for a male, and he always hated it. He wants our kids to have names that are not so rare, though I don't think he is urging us to choose the most popular names, either.

PS My sister has a pretty common name, but I never heard her complain about it for that reason. She complains that it's difficult to pronounce, though.

Great topic! I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I work in early childhood education, so I see a lot of the "new" names come through. I've lost count of the number of Aiden/Aidans, Sophias, Avas, Jacobs, etc that I've come across in the last 4 or 5 years. For this reason, I've always been sensitive to name popularity. I totally agree with the candy analogy, btw. I think the name Aidan is really sweet, but I've got a toothache from having so many of them!

When my son was born we decided on the name Tobias, nn Toby. I loved that it was not common, yet not unheard of, and easy to spell...my three top requirements in a name. I'm having a really hard time finding names that fit them as well as Toby does. However, if there was a family name that I really loved...especially when it would give your mother in law such joy...I wouldn't let it stop me.


By the way, Deidre I'm DYING to know what your name is!