On some name boards I have seen both of these opinions expressed
If you have a common name, do you wish you had a less common one?
If you have a rare name, do you wish you had a more common one?
I had a common (top 10) name and changed it to a rare one in my 20s.
i’ve always had a rare name and i’ve never wished for it to be more common or anything. i definitely like having a rare name!
i’m a hannah born in the 2000s, i think it was #11 in my country the year i was born. i’ve never hated it being popular, but i would like a name that was more interesting i guess?
ideally, i think i would have a recognisable but not popular name. something along the lines of ivy, juliet, matilda etc
I have a top 20 (easily top 10 when hyphenated variants are combined) name and there are 9 others with it in my school year. Really wish it was at least a bit less common.
i have a rare name and i love it. i think the only thing that annoys me is people not pronouncing it right but i honestly love it, even if i have a problem correcting people.
i think i have the best of both worlds - my (real) name is well known, but not particularly common (in the top 200 now, but outside of the top 500 when i was born). nobody exclaims as to the rarity of my name, but i never meet anyone who shares it !
bit of a shy, anxious kid growing up so though i had one of the most common names (knew about 5-7 other girls in my grade with the same first name), i loved that i could easily go by unnoticed and be forgotten later on.
although, i had a pretty unique middle that every single teacher misspelled, mispronounced, and had to ask me to stand and correct them that my introverted self dreaded the first week of classes every year!
tldr: love my short, forgettable, common name because i’m an anxious bean, but unique middle name destroys all hope of going by unnoticed.
[name_f]My[/name_f] name wasn’t very popular in the year that I was born but entered the Top 200 (in the US) when I was around 4, eventually making it into the top 20 for a little while. In “real life”, I knew one girl with my name older than me and heard of another. [name_f]My[/name_f] junior year in high school, I won a small reading award and attended a banquet. There were 6 of us with the same name, the others younger than me!
So yeah, my name wasn’t super common but it certainly did get more commonly used in my small town over time. Still, I was the only one in my grade and it made me stand out enough to where I was uncomfortable. I was extremely quiet and timid. Any attention to myself made me want to crawl into a hole. Having to spell my name out loud, having remarks made about it, having to recount my naming story to teachers, etc. made me miserable. I often wished I was a [name_f]Sarah[/name_f] or a Hannah…something that blended in more.
I love my name, don’t get me wrong. I’ve grown into it and feel more positive towards it these days. I wouldn’t change it to something more common (or rarer) at all. It still requires me to spell it out and it gets misheard/mispronounced often but it is common enough now to not be a huge issue.
It’s kind of funny how it happens though. Parents who had super common names (Jennifer, etc) seem to go for less common names for their kids. I’ve seen several people with rare names go for more common names for their kids. You can never predict how somehow will feel about their name.
The year I was born, my name ranked around 767 in my country. I never met another [name_u]Hazel[/name_u] until once at a museum (when I was probably 11 years old), I heard a mother calling to her toddler daughter, whose name was also [name_u]Hazel[/name_u]. I love my name! I love that it’s unique and I love that it’s so old-fashioned and old-lady-ish. I’ve had several people tell my upon meeting me there great-aunts or elderly mothers’ best friends are named [name_u]Hazel[/name_u]. People often have a reaction when I tell them my name, as I’m usually the first [name_u]Hazel[/name_u] they’ve met, and it’s either “I’ve never heard that before!” or something sweet and complimentary. I’ve had an all-around lovely experience bearing the name I do. I truly love my name, and while I’m a little shocked with how popular she’s becoming, I’m glad [name_u]Hazel[/name_u] is getting loved and chosen so often today!
I have a more rare name, though it’s a bit more popular for people younger than me (more toddlers than late teens/adults with my name), I honestly wish my name was more rare than it is already, but I love my name and my middle name is even more rare than my first so there’s that too
[name_f]My[/name_f] name is pretty rare, especially in the country where I lived until I was in my early teens. I didn’t mind, it sounded familiar to most people because it’s a combination of two well known names. I actually loved having a rare name. It did get misspelled regularly, but it never really bothered me.
[name_f]My[/name_f] twin brother, on the other hand, has a name that’s extremely common. There was always at least one other boy with his name in our class. I’m not saying he hated it, but it was annoying at times.
i have a pretty uncommon name, but the variant aria is climbing. like @hannahhh said, i ideally would have wanted a recognizable but not super popular name, but i do love my name!
I have a common name and I do wish it was more interesting/unique. Part of this is because I have some irrational belief that i would be less boring as a person if my name was more exciting (a notion that i would apply to no one but myself 
)
I feel like my name is a good balance between common and uncommon. Megan is a very familiar name, but I actually don’t know too many other girls named Megan. If anything, I could go a bit rarer.
Great question!
I really love my name. There were two others of the same name in my class at school and since then, I’ve known probably three with the same name so that’s the sweet spot for me. Not [name_f]Abyssinia[/name_f] or [name_m]Falmouth[/name_m], but not [name_f]Jennifer[/name_f] or [name_u]Lisa[/name_u] (from my era).
I love that it is Scottish like me, that it has a Z sound, and feel it suits me deeply.
[name_f]My[/name_f] brother’s name is Scottish too which my parents didn’t do on purpose either, as it’s a family name.
I will say though that I lean heavily toward a multi-syllabic -a ending name for girl daughters both for the beauty and the nickname options. If I had a daughter today (or tomorrow), her name would be [name_f]Forsythia[/name_f].
I’m Ashley, born when it was the number one girls name in the US, and I wish I had been named something else. But. I can’t say I wish I’d been named something less common. It’s not that cut-and-dry. I would have loved to be named something like Elizabeth or Sarah, which are technically more common. It’s the style of the name that doesn’t resonate with me, and its TRENDINESS rather than its commonness. Yes, it was annoying in that brief stage of my life when I was one of three Ashleys in a class, but I’m sure I would’ve felt less perturbed had I had pride in my name. I would’ve loved to identify with it, or have a distinctive nickname all my own (like the true classics can provide–Elizabeth, Margaret, Josephine, Mary).
I love my name. It’s not really common where I live although I did meet someone else with a different spelling of my name.
If I had to have a common name then I would go for [name_f]Daisy[/name_f] or [name_f]Ada[/name_f]. I think [name_f]Aurora[/name_f] as well.
For a more unique name, I love [name_f]Persephone[/name_f], [name_u]Phaedra[/name_u], [name_f]Daphne[/name_f] or [name_f]Antigone[/name_f] for myself.
edited for privacy
This! This is exactly how I wanted to word this. It’s the style of my name that I’m not super in love with. I wouldn’t mind a more common name that’s more of a classic and just not as tied to a certain year. Or I would also really love a more rare name!
For example I’d love have a more elegant name like Elizabeth or Guinevere but I’d also love to feel more interesting as a Kestrel or January. Instead my name is very tied to the 80’s/90’s like Jessica, Brittany, Stephanie etc. And feels forever teenage-ish… if that makes sense? Annoying part is I wasn’t even born in either decade 
There’s two other people in my year who I frequently interact with who have the same name as me and I don’t love it. The fact that I often go under next to the other two people annoys me. I also really don’t like being called by my surname initial as well. The upside is that it’s just always funny to see people’s reactions when they realise they’re in the same room as three people with my name (Because it’s not super common).