i always see people here talking about how overused charlotte is and in suburban NYC US i don’t really know anyone wiht the name. where are you and is it popular there? US/outside US? urban/suburban/country? i find names move in pockets and i dont think i am in the charlotte pocket so wondering where it is??
I’m in NYC with family in suburban NJ & I know Charlottes of all ages…like baby-30s. I feel like it kind of boomed 8 or so years ago as that is the age group of a few I know.
I don’t know any Charlottes. 
Where I live, it’s above the national average, but I’m quite confused by the SSA list, haha–it usually doesn’t match up with who you know! If we went by names I had heard, for my state, [name]Elijah[/name], [name]Francisco[/name], and [name]Jacob[/name] would be the top 3 for boys, and [name]Autumn[/name], [name]Cora[/name], and [name]Leah[/name] would probably be the top for girls, lol. I’m curious where all the Charlottes are, too! I hear people say all the time, I know this [name]Charlotte[/name] and that [name]Charlotte[/name] and all these Charlies and Lotties and so on, but I haven’t met a single one in person, besides a handful of Charlottes through work, who are all above the age of 40 or so.
[name]Charlotte[/name] isn’t within the top 25 here in [name]Alberta[/name] [name]Canada[/name], (I believe it’s in the top 50 though) but you need to keep popularity in perspective. In my province alone, there were 50,000+ babies born last year. That’s a lot of babies, probably about…49,950 more than anyone will ever meet haha. Out of that 50,000 there were 78 baby girls named [name]Charlotte[/name] with the common spelling, and a handful more with some different spellings. There are a total of 2,139 schools in my province alone, that is less than one [name]Charlotte[/name] born in 2011 for every school in my province. (It’s like, 0.03 per school, and you can’t have 0.03 of a person!) The most common name in my province for girls was only used 290 times.
Now picture this number in a bigger place. If I am to believe what I’ve read, [name]Charlotte[/name] was #27 in the U.S last year, out of 3,953,593. Now, #27 may look like it’s a pretty high up there, but if the #1 girls name for 50,000 plus babies, was only 290, the number 27 name for almost 4 million babies isn’t going to be that much either. There are almost 100,000 schools in the U.S.A. As much as people do not want their child to be [name]Baby[/name] A [name]Baby[/name] B [name]Baby[/name] C in their Kindergarten classes, it needs to be a pretty big coincidence that there will be several of that name in one classroom, the pool for girls names has grown exponentially from what it was, so even the most popular, aren’t that common.
As for name pockets, I think that tends to be more in the Cultural and Social circles people run in compared to the geographical location. Chances are, if you hang out with a certain type of people, you’ll see a certain type of baby name more often than not. (See: Hipster names etc) So if one person in a group of people LOVES [name]Charlotte[/name], I’m sure their friends/acquaintances have the same taste/style and will also strongly consider the name. Another thing to consider is that some people see a name once and figure EVERYONE is using it, when they are really not, so they’ll call it overused, when it’s not at all.
It’s certainly not popular in my Mennonite culture; people are still using [name]Hannah[/name], also [name]Ellie[/name] and variatons. Locally, here in my part of Manitoba, [name]Canada[/name], I don’t see many of them in birth announcements either.
I agree with what kibby said about cultural and social circles.
In my classes, there were always at least three or four Ashleys and Courtneys, so it doesn’t require that much coincidence when a name is in the top twenty. Consider that when a name is in the top for several years in a row, that increases chances of meeting them even within your grade year, as any one class is often composed of students born in multiple years.
I’ve actually not met many Charlottes either, in person, maybe five or six in my whole life.
There were no less than 4 Ashleys in my upgrading class last semester, all age 20+, but 20 years ago the name pool for girls was much much smaller than it is now. (356 Ashleys of only the one spelling in 1990, and it was only #3, that’s almost 100 more than last years number one name!!!) The top name in 1990 was [name]Jessica[/name] where I live, and there were 433 of them, close to double what the current number one name in my province now has. There are only 27 pages of girls names (same page format) in the name registry pages, compared to 2011’s 47 pages for girls. 1990 - http://www.servicealberta.ca/pdf/vs/1990_Girls.pdf, 2011 - http://www.servicealberta.ca/pdf/vs/2011_Girls.pdf
In a culture where everyone is trying to be unique, even the most popular names aren’t THAT popular anymore. I love that my province keeps such detailed records, it makes it so easy to track things like this!