Why Popularity Matters Less Than You Think: Part 2

Second in a series to celebrate the release of the new US name data this weekend

May 10, 2025

This post is the second of three in a series exploring name popularity. You can find the first part here. The last part is here.

My first post talked about the way contemporary parents worry about avoiding popular names for their children, without realizing that even the most popular names are way less popular than their counterparts from a generation ago. In this post, I’m going to unpack how even if you still want to maximize your chances of avoiding a popular name (for yourself or your child)—looking at large-scale data can only get you so far.

For a sense of what I mean, take a look at this table:

Data from the Social Security Administration website

and then these:

Four different states, four different regions of the country. Some conservative, some liberal, some more racially/ethnically homogeneous, some more diverse. None of them stray wildly from the national data—every single list has at least 40% overlap with the national top 10—but none of them are exactly the same, either. If you’re in Vermont, Asher and Hudson are significantly more popular than they look from the national chart. Ditto Camila and Santiago in California, with its large Latine community.

If you want to know “what’s popular,”, having a sense of what’s going on in your region is important. But that’s just the beginning.

Point #2: Popularity in a particular community can (and usually does) look very different from the “big list.”

I have two young school-aged kids. So even if I weren’t immersed in the world of name popularity, the odds are good that I would have some sense of what names are popular for kids my kids’ age and younger—because trends tend to show themselves.

Quick example: a few years before my older kid was born, I had three different friends use the name Lucas for their sons in the course of about two years (between 2011 and 2013). These kids lived in three different states; their parents didn’t know each other; and perhaps most notably as far as I was concerned, the families had three very different backgrounds (all with one American-born parent, of various ethnic heritage, and one immigrant parent, from three different continents).

When the third one was born, I went oh, this is gonna be big soon. And sure enough, Lucas went from #35 in 2010 to #16 in 2015, and entered the top 10 in 2018. Pretty clear-cut “quiet rise” up the charts.

When my last friend had her son Lucas in 2013, I went oh, I think that name’s gonna be big by the time he gets to school. He started school in 2018, the year Lucas broke into the top 10. If I remember correctly, she called me to complain.

But even with multiple years of data—even if you’re looking for the quiet rise—figuring out which names are popular in your area isn’t always that obvious.

My kids were born in 2016 and 2019: practically speaking, that means I know a TON of kids born between about 2015 and 2020. But if I look at the top 20 male and female names for 2017 (the middle of that range), my family only knows kids with 6 of the male names and 7 of the female names. And only three of those names repeat in our social group.

On the other hand, here are a few names that do repeat among the kids I know, with their respective ranks in the year those kids were born.

Esme. Ranked #682 in 2015 and #585 in 2016. We knew two Esme’s in the same playgroup for a while when my older kid was a toddler.
Lyra. Ranked #932 in 2016 and #497 in 2022.
Flora. Ranked #936 in 2019 and #726 in 2022.

And then there’s one of the few names we know that belongs to 3 different kids.

Kaleo.

Since I’m gonna guess this is a name you haven’t heard before, I’ll take a minute to introduce it. Pronounced kah-LAY-oh, it’s a Hawaiian name meaning “the voice” (Ka and Ke are the Hawaiian definite articles, which is why they feature in so many names1”). It’s never ranked in the top 1000 in the US; it was given to 74 babies in 2016 and 108 in 2019. If you were a prospective parent looking for a unique name to give to your child, Kaleo would seem like a pretty safe bet.

Nonetheless, the group of three Kaleos in my social circle includes two kids who’ve attended the same small school.

So what’s going on here? How did three families who didn’t know each other stumble across the same extremely unusual name?

I think there’s two reasons. One has to do with society; the other has to do with subcultures. And both of them, like it or not, have to do with trends.

In his book A Matter of Taste, sociologist Stanley Lieberson pointed out that the sweet spot for any trend-driven item—skirt lengths, car styles, haircuts—is something that’s different, but not too different. Most people can’t resist a novel spin on an existing idea. This is why Jennifer (#1 on the US girls’ list from 1970-1984) was supplanted by Jessica (1985-1995); same first letter, same number of syllables, but just a little bit different.

Even people who are seeking something “really distinctive” aren’t completely immune to these effects. Flora gets part of its popularity boost from Nora (#25 in 2023), just as Lyra gets one from Lyla (#98).

But it’s also true that tastes are more similar between people who have more in common. Parents from the same cultural background and economic class are more likely to have similar tastes. So if your community’s mainly liberal, educated, white professionals–like many of the people I meet through my kids’ social circle–your peers are more likely to use the style of names favored by educated white liberals. Gently old-fashioned, potentially literary, and traditionally Anglo-European. That’s why my kids’ school is full of kids named Cecilia (#178 in 2016 when my older kid was born) and George (#125) and Mabel (#512 in 2016, #278 now) and Arthur (#273 in 2016). And why the popular name site Nameberry’s top names—chosen by name nerds—look so different from the overall national list2.

On the other hand, if you’re a member of a community that overlaps with this one but is a little more artsy, your “different-but-not-too-different” instincts might lead you down a slightly different path. Instead of an old-fashioned Anglo-European name, you might seek out something more distinctive-feeling, from a novel but usable ethnic background (like Hawaiian, when Kai and Leilani are both in the top 100). You might focus on a meaningful etymology (all three of the Kaleos I know have a musician parent; I can see why “the voice” might jump out to that group as an appealing meaning). And whether you were aware of it or not, your sense of what felt accessible would be influenced by other popular names of the moment. So you might be drawn to a name that shared its sounds with Leo (#18) or Arlo (#158) or Cole (#155).

And voila! A completely unique, familiar, accessible name that your child would never share with anyone.

Until they did.

None of this is a problem. We all exist in conversation with trends, and having a name that feels like a natural fit in your community is probably something most people are seeking on one level or another. I share the examples to show that trying to find something truly unique in your social circle is a more complex process than people often realize–and if you want to know what names or kinds of names are being used in your community, the national list won’t actually help you that much.

The names that are popular in your community aren’t going to match the national list of popular names–and often, the path from the hottest current trends to the name you’ve fallen in love with isn’t as untrodden as you’d think.

If having a unique name is really important to you, I’d recommend trying to get more granular data–look at your region, your state, or your metro area. Look at the top 100 names and see how the names you like might share qualities with them that’d be inclined to make them stand out as “different but not too different” choices.

Or, of course, you could always ask a professional for help. ::waves::

In all seriousness, though, I think people would be better served by worrying less about choosing something that’s “really distinctive.” There will always be factors outside your control that determine what names are about to shoot up the charts. I remember vividly interviewing a family who’d had a baby in 2010 and named her Mila—just a few months before Black Swan catapulted Mila Kunis’s name into the public eye. In the end, if popularity is important to you, you make your best calculation and hope for the best.

And–in the end–I’d argue that whether your name is at the top of the charts, the middle, or the bottom, doesn’t matter as much as people worry it does.

Janus Name Journeys

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