Why Popularity Matters Less Than You Think: Part 3

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

This post is the last of three in a series exploring name popularity. Here are links to the first and second parts.

So far in this series, I’ve talked about how the percentage of people receiving the most popular names has been steadily declining since at least the ‘80s (or, as I put it when I’m feeling pithy, “the most popular names are less popular than ever before.”) I’ve also explained how trying to avoid a super-popular name requires doing more than just looking at big picture data, because name taste—like anything else related to trends and identity—can get very granular.

So what happens if you “mess it up?” What if despite your best efforts you pick a name for yourself or your child that’s surprisingly common in your peer group?

Well. As a professional, I’m here to say that I don’t think it’s that big a problem. Let’s talk about why.

Point #3: Having a popular (or unpopular) name really isn’t that big a deal.

When people talk to me about wanting to avoid the most popular names, there are a few different reasons they tend to give.

For some people, it’s about wanting to steer clear of trends; one trans adult I know, when talking about considering new name options, said they were drawn toward something “relatively normal” instead of the “funky, obviously-chosen names” that they felt were more common in the trans community.

For other people, it’s a straight-up desire for distinctiveness (being “Googleable”). Parents I’ve spoken with worry about the negative effects of their child being one of several kids in their circle with the same name, and talk about how they want the name to feel like a special gift, part of their child’s unique identity. Implicit in this, I think, is a reflection of our (Western) culture’s preoccupation with individuation, with how important it is to be The One And Only You.

I tend to meet both concerns the same way—by reminding people that your name is only one piece of your identity, and that every name has two parts to how it interfaces with the social world.

• First impressions. This is the resume effect, the Starbucks barista effect, the first day of school or introducing yourself at a party. The reactions that stem from when someone first encounters a name.

• Everyday use. This is the way your name lands in your social circle; with coworkers, classmates, friends. Everything after the first impression.

When people consider the popularity of a name, they tend to be thinking mainly about the first impressions aspect. My friend who’s considering a new name for themself seems to feel like an “obviously chosen” name doesn’t project the image they want people to have; they don’t want the new name to draw attention to itself. To re-use a reference, they want an Elliot Page vibe, not a Jazz Jennings one.

They’re also, as far as I can tell, in the minority. At least from where I’m sitting.

For what it’s worth, this friend is Canadian (as is Elliot Page!), but because I’m located in the US, most of my context for cultural trends is American. I haven’t dug deeply into whether other countries are seeing the substantial increase in unusual names that the US has (don’t worry, that’ll be a subject for a later post!), but I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it’s a stronger trend in the US than elsewhere.

The American adults I know who dislike having a popular name draw heavily on the language of first impressions, talking about the trials and tribulations of being one of two Jennifers getting simultaneous orders at Starbucks. Parents have hopes and dreams about what having an unusual name will do for their kids—that it’ll catapult them to the top of the resume pile, or give them a stronger sense of their own individuality, or make people want to be friends with them. Being unique is conflated with being interesting, lovable, and successful.

That doesn’t surprise me. As my fellow sociologist Claude Fischer put it:

Americans like to see themselves as rugged individualists, a nation defined by the idea that people should set their own course through life. Think of Clint Eastwood rendering justice, rule-bound superiors be damned. Think of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.”

The idea that personal liberty defines America is deeply rooted, and shared across the political spectrum. The lifestyle radicals of the ’60s saw themselves as heirs to this American tradition of self-expression; today, it energizes the Tea Party movement, marching to defend individual liberty from the smothering grasp of European-style collectivism.

Marching to the beat of a different drum is part of the American story, so of course people want their names and the names of those they love to feel like part of that. But just as the story of “American individualism” is more complex than the myth, the practical effects of having a popular or an unusual name aren’t quite what people think they are.

The fabulous Abby Sandel of Appellation Mountain unpacks both the upsides of popular names and the downsides of unusual ones pretty well. For the popular ones, she basically says that popular names are accessible (you don’t have to spell them or repeat them a hundred times), they tend to be appealing, and many people enjoy having popular names. She also points out that “some of the most popular names might still sound novel… Name your daughter Jennifer today, and odds are good she’ll be the only Jenny in her class.” As someone whose kids’ names were long-time top 10 favorites that most recently peaked in 1947 and 1953, I can confirm this!

Abby’s arguments against unusual names fall mainly along similar lines. Unusual names are often harder to spell and pronounce; they invite questions and often require explanations. For someone who doesn’t want their first conversation with every new person they meet to be about their name, that might be a major downside. An unusual name also makes you much more Googleable, which can be great, and can also mean that your entire online life is easier to find than you’d strictly prefer. Finally, as Abby points out and I mentioned in my last post, there’s no guarantee an obscure name won’t suddenly become a popular name almost overnight.

But what about being an individual? What about being special and unique?

So—to potentially state the obvious—how popular or unpopular someone’s name is doesn’t have any effect on how unique they are as a person. I’m a child of the 80s; I know a dozen Jennifers. There are three Jessicas who my family sees on a weekly basis. My dad, my husband’s best friend, our car mechanic and our electrician are all Mikes (well, one’s a Michael, but you get the idea). We very rarely confuse these people. A person’s name is an important part of their identity; it’s also just one piece.

Sure, there are logistics to overcome with a popular name. My kids just took a book out of the library whose author has the same name—first and last—as one of our friends. In an elementary school classroom, you might find yourself being “Jessica H.” to differentiate you from Jessica R. and Jessica A. But once you leave elementary school, the times when you find yourself spending most of your time in a group of 20+ people who need to be distinguished by someone calling names out loud get markedly fewer. My husband’s a software guy; there was both a Matt and a Matthew on his last team. The sociology department I was part of in graduate school had a Mike and a Michael. The reason names like Robert and Edward have non-intuitive nicknames like Bob and Ted is because there were so many people with the name in the Middle Ages that people created extra nicknames to help differentiate. People figure it out.

For all the people who are seeking unusual names to help their kid stand out in a first impression—it’s very unlikely that an unusual name will be the piece of your resume that gets you an interview¹. And having an uncommon name is no guarantee that people will remember it on a first try. My daughter, who has a name that’s unusual for her age group, is called Sarah all the time. Her name’s not Sarah. People meet her, encode her name in their memory as “starts-with-an-S-and-strange-for-a-little-girl” and transpose it into the most common Gen X/Millennial S-name instead of jumping back to the Boomer-era name she’s actually got. And then she corrects them again, and they get it. Eventually. But I don’t think it’s caused her any significant trauma.

Every name’s going to have first impression problems for someone. There’s no real way around that. And for the people who are worried about the everyday use piece—will people view me or my kid as more artsy or creative or unique if the name they hear is a distinctive one—I’ll let you in on a little secret that I don’t usually tell clients.

My kids don’t have unusual names, but lots of their friends do. In our artsy, immigrant-welcoming California hometown, they go to school with kids whose names come from all over the world, whose parents chose names from novels and obscure family names and unique word names that have never been given to five or more babies in the US in a single year². And each time I meet a kid with a new and different name, I’m intrigued by it. For about a week. And then it’s just their name, and I rarely think about it anymore.

In everyday life, a name doesn’t have as much influence on how we view a person as you’d think. It’s just their name.

In my experience, that’s the norm for most people, most of the time. Even name nerds. When thinking about names as an abstraction, we consider every piece—the spelling, the etymology, the linguistic and cultural connections, what we might be able to deduce about someone who carried that name. But in real life… a name is just one piece of someone. Multiple studies have shown that the cumulative psychological effects of having a common or distinctive name are relatively small. A name can hint at your context, but it usually doesn’t change it all that much.

And so whether the person in front of you is a Jennifer (#1 in 1983, given to 54,319 female babies) or a Garnet (given to 5 female babies in 1983), a Noah (#1 in 2016, given to 19,015 male babies) or a Pippin (given to 5 male babies in 2016), as you get to know them better, they’ll just be who they are.

Name and all.

In addition to my work here on Substack, I also work one-on-one with individuals and families looking to find names. I’ve been working as a name consultant for almost eight years and have dozens of satisfied clients. If you know someone who’s looking for the perfect name—for themself, their child, or someone or something else—please feel free to send them my way.

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1. In fact, an old study (2004) suggests that some kinds of unusual names—those an interviewer is likely to associate with working-class African-Americans—significantly reduced the odds of a callback. A marginally more recent study (2014) finds slightly better results, but those researchers also chose to go with Black-coded surnames like Washington instead of Black-coded first names, which feels like a substantial change to me.

2. This is the limit the Social Security Administration sets on the data it releases for public consumption: any name given to fewer than five kids nationally is held back because of privacy concerns. So I can’t say for sure that the kids I know whose names don’t appear in the list were the ONLY ones born in their birth year given their name… but I can make a reasonable guess that the names were pretty dang rare.