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Top Ten Regrettable Baby Names
Baby naming is serious business. Before saddling our kid with a name for life, we poll our friends, climb around in the family tree and, of course, search the Internet for baby name suggestions. Our long lists of possible names become short lists until we’ve narrowed it down to the perfect name. But while most of us are ultimately satisfied we chose the right one, some of us end up with a bad case of baby name regret.
A recent report reveals that 3% of us wish we could take it all back again and choose a different name for our child. But the reasons most parents experience baby name regret are not the reasons you might expect.
While there are no doubt a few Quocvans and Zenos running around out there whose parents wish they’d done better, it seems that most of the second guessing comes when the chosen name ends up on the list of most popular baby names. Because we would rather our child have an unusual, stand-out name than one that gets lost in the crowd of Isabellas and Jacobs.
A recent poll of 3,000 parents reveals that the most regretted baby name for a boy is the perfectly nice and apparently all-too-common William. In fact, with the exception of Alfie, all the regretted boy’s names on the list are quite common. Ditto for the girls. While the number one regretted girl’s name is the somewhat unique Chloe, most of the others are rather old-fashioned.
To help you avoid your own bout of baby name regret, have a look at the names other parents wish they’d steered clear of. The top ten regretted baby names:
BOYS
1. William
2. Oliver
3. Jack
4. Alfie
5. Thomas
6. Joshua
7. Daniel
8. Charlie
9. Harry
10. James
GIRLS
1. Chloe
2. Ruby
3. Olivia
4. Emily
5. Grace
6. Jessica
7. Charlotte
8. Evie
9. Sophie
10. Daisy
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9 Comments
[...] Top Ten Regrettable Baby Names [...]
High School Kids Cheat. A Lot. | Strollerderby commented on May 14 10 at 12:35 pmCSE commented on May 13 10 at 2:00 pmIt seems important to point out that this is a survey of parents in the UK. There stil aren’t a lot of Alfies running around the US.
mommyK commented on May 13 10 at 2:47 pmAnd it might also explain the William angst.
Ri-chan commented on May 13 10 at 2:50 pmI wanted to name my son Ambrose, but named him Aaron instead because my Husband really wanted his first born to be named after him. So he’s Aaron II now. I plan on nameing the next one either Ambrose or Eliora depending on the sex.
Tanya commented on May 13 10 at 7:43 pmBack before I actually was a parent I spent an evening compiling the Social Security Administration’s list of top ten names from the past 120 years, just for fun. What is fascinating is not so much the names themselves (though it’s fun to see Jennifers and Jessicas in my cohort as well as Jan-prefixed names about a generation before that), but the dispersal of name popularity in the country. Until about 1950, the top ten baby names comprised 50% of the population, with Mary and John as the perennial #1 names. Starting in the 1960s the top ten names started to make up less of the population, to where it is now only about 10% (if I’m remembering correctly, gotta find that spreadsheet). So now even if you have the top name for your year, you are probably sharing it with far fewer people than you would have had you been named Mary about a century ago.
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That said, this regrets list would probably be very different for the US. Here the name “Charlie” (my son’s name incidentally) ranks somewhere in the middle of the top 100, but is still far less popular than it once was. And technically, the name is Charles – I think Charlie as a given name barely even cracks the top 1000.
Marj commented on May 14 10 at 12:18 pmMany of those are nicknames. Alfie is short for Alfred. Harry is usually short of Harold (or even Harrison). I’m a big fan of formal names and nicknames. That way you can call them Charlie, but when they are a CEO of a bank, they will have the more dignified Charles on their business cards.
Elisabeth at youcantcallitit.com commented on May 16 10 at 9:46 amPlease edit to include that this study was done in ENGLAND. This makes very little sense out of context.
What we can take away from Americans in this study is that parents may want to rethink choosing a top 10 name for their child because they are to the point of over saturation.
I wrote about 2009′s top 100 here: http://youcantcallitit.com/2010/05/11/top-100-baby-names-2009-new-inductees/
Marissa commented on May 22 10 at 9:42 pmOliver? I love that name and am using it if I ever have a boy. I don’t think its common at all in the US.
jessica commented on May 03 12 at 11:10 pmwhen it came down to naming our two kids, my husband and i chose names that we liked instead of going with popular names. i wanted something a bit unconvential but not unheard of rather than something that would be irritating or embarrassing for my kids. Personally i had five jessicas in my kindergarten class alone and i didnt want my kids to have to deal with how irritating that was when the teacher had to call us by first and last name to keep us all straight. i hated my name by the end of high school. my first born was named damien and my second was dante. i have a preference for d names.
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