Are there names you would use regardless of popularity/put on your list? Or once they hit that spot you are not comfortable with are they off the list? Or are you just someone who doesn’t care about popularity?
Now I don’t care about popularity at all but the first name to break my “don’t use if it’s hyperpopular” boundaries was [name_f]Isabella[/name_f] nn [name_f]Isla[/name_f] and it only broke it because of the double name at the time. Now I have tonnes of popular names in my lists and don’t care about that anymore, I love names because I love them, not because they’re not something.
I’d be lying if I said that I don’t pay attention to popularity at all, but it isn’t too big of a deal to me. We’d still use any of the names on our list, regardless…although I’ll admit, my heart does kind of sink when I see our favorites rising in the charts though lol.
[name_f]Olivia[/name_f] is a favorite of mine. I don’t like that it’s so popular, but it wouldn’t deter me from using i.
I want to say I’d use any name regardless of popularity, but I have a very popular last name (35th most popular last name in the USA). Popularity has to be considered as I know there are other kids in the school district with the same last name, and I wouldn’t want my child to have the exact same name as another kid. I would like to stay out of the top #25. I know [name_f]Aurora[/name_f] is number #51 now, and number #36 in my state, so I do watch that popularity. I’d be heartbroken if it became super popular, but for good reason as its beautiful. Other than that I’m not too concerned about most of my names as they are about 75+.
I have an ultra-popular name ([name_f]Emma[/name_f], in the 1990s, in the UK) and this has made me decide to avoid anything too popular. My issue is that I like traditional names, which in the UK are ultra-popular, so I’ve had to chop off a lot from my list with great sadness.
The only one that has stayed is [name_m]Joseph[/name_m], for family significance. That one will always stay. Names that have been removed include [name_f]Florence[/name_f], [name_m]Sebastian[/name_m], [name_m]Theodore[/name_m] and [name_f]Ava[/name_f]. I’d use them as middles though.
Yes, I think there are names that transcend popularity! [name_u]James[/name_u] (US #4 in 2017) is the easiest example; despite its ranking, I doubt anyone beyond the most data-dedicated name nerd would include it if asked to name five popular American baby boy names in 2017.
Generally, names that are fairly timeless–used consistently over many generations like [name_u]James[/name_u]–are the ones that seem to transcend popularity, I think. [name_f]Elizabeth[/name_f] would be a good example on the American girls’ lists.
For traditional names that fall out of fashion and then return, it seems to depend a little on how far they rise and how fast they get there? [name_f]Jane[/name_f] (US #282) has been increasing in popularity since about 2010, though I don’t think anyone would knock it off their list for becoming too popular at this point–but I’ve definitely heard “getting too popular” applied to [name_f]Adelaide[/name_f] (#276), [name_f]Vera[/name_f] (#278), [name_f]Freya[/name_f] (#305), and [name_u]Juniper[/name_u] (#314). Same goes for [name_f]Frances[/name_f], which has risen nearly 400 places in the last 10 years to land at #438 in 2017, but it doesn’t get the same “getting too popular” comments than similarly-ranked [name_f]Edith[/name_f] (which has an almost identical trajectory to [name_f]Frances[/name_f]), [name_f]Eve[/name_f], or [name_f]Willa[/name_f].