I was wondering what your thoughts were in regards to popularity ranking. Specifically, on another thread, this mom was talking about the name [name]Connor[/name], and if everyone thought it was too popular, as it is the name she and her husband have loved forever.
Another poster had said it was ranked #57, and she said that equated to about 7700 babies (I would love to know, is that from the SS site?). I didnt post, but I wanted too, that if you add the three spellings, [name]Connor[/name]#57-[name]Conner[/name]#163-[name]Conor[/name]#517, where would the name rank?
I ran into a similar situation with my daughters name, it was ranked in the 50’s, and found out when she started school, that there were 4 others (out of 90 kids), 2 spelled the same and two different, but sound the same. So basically she will be using her last initial her entire school career.
Should I have posted? Has anyone else had this happen?
Whenever I start to really like a name I check it out on all the lists online to see the different rankings. If it appears high on a majority of the lists I usually start to distance myself from it. Honestly rather someone’s name is [name]Lilly[/name], [name]Lili[/name], [name]Lilli[/name], or [name]Lily[/name] it still sounds the same and when someone says it out loud it can still cause confusion. So, I would check all spelling variations and see how highly they are ranked before I’d make a decision about the name.
Here is the SSA website that shows how popular a baby name is (whatever you input):
You can look up the names and it will have its rank for the last 9 years (by default) or any number of years that you choose. Only names in the top 1000 will appear, so if you want to spell it Konyr (an extreme example), you can see that it is not popular enough to be ranked. You would still want to gauge the popularity of [name]Connor[/name], and on the sidebar, a few most common spellings will also show how high or low they ranked (above 1000) to see if it is a popular name and you are just spelling it funny.
Similar male names for births in 2008
Name Rank
[name]Conner[/name] 163
[name]Connor[/name] 57
[name]Conor[/name] 517
[name]Konner[/name] 824
[name]Konnor[/name] 878
You can also look up how common the name is in your state and also see a list of names that are most popular this year compared with last year. Keep in mind “this year” means the last full year of births, 2008. There are no statistics of 2009, so some names might have jumped up quite a bit in the first 6 months or become notably less popular for some reason. My impression is that there wouldn’t be too many more Connors since 2008, probably a steadily popular choice as opposed to a faddish attraction to the name or variants of it.