About 15 years ago, I had a friend who wanted to give her kids strong names. She liked Roman Emperor names.The first two babies were Aurelius and Maximus.
Thats just mean, IMO. These kids have to live with these names all their lives, face potential taunting by peers, and never ever find any coffee mug or keychain with their name on it in gift stores 
My BIL has a family name for a first name, and a female sounding name for a middle name. I am VERY thankful my DH got a standard name.
I was feeling badly enough that DS#2’s initials spell a word. It has come up in conversation. Its not terrible, but I was aware of it and concerned about it when we named him. While yes, its nice to have a choice in naming a child that is meaningful in some way, I do recall my poor classmate in lower/middle school getting teased unmercifully because her name was Mona Lisa.
@Madison85, we know of a newborn just named Maximus!
I had a great aunt Pearl & a great uncle Ruby.
Pearl was my gmas sister & Ruby,my gpas brother. They were also married to each other.
Don’t laugh, but I’m of the mindset that you can’t go wrong with a name that you’d find on a keychain, etc.
My FIL has a female-sounding name as his first name for some ungodly reason, and has always gone by FirstInitial Middlename Lastname, and called by his middle name. We have no idea why this first name was chosen for him. It’s actually a variant of my first name, that would be somewhat uncommon but unremarkable for a girl.
One of my brothers gave his baby daughter a cutesy name, which was usually a nickname for the more formal version. I can still hear my father saying “How will that look on her business card when she’s a CEO?”
Fascinating to read about how names are chosen. Context and traditions determine a lot.
Our DS has a super common last name and a first name that is often top 10. His profession puts him somewhat in the public eye locally and when you Google the name, there are thousands who share it, including a recently notorious person. His birth pre-dates Google and I wonder if people consider the search engine process/how common variables more when naming now.
Conversely, DD has same last name with a first name that has been used over time in the US, but never broke the top 650. Several share her first and last name, but you could find her quickly. There are two spellings of her name (with 2 different pronunciations), so she often has to spell it and some pronounce her name the way the alternate spelling would be said. With all that, it still is a relatively simple two syllable name.
Both kids like their names; we would have gone in a different direction with our son’s if we had paid more attention to how popular it was.
I love the wider range of names used now. When I was in school, the redundancy was tedious. If you heard my name you could immediately guess the decade of my birth. Not so with either of my kids, for opposite reasons.
I think it’s hard when people give a boy a name that turns out to be more popular now with girls. For example - I know of boys called Taylor (goes by J.T), a Madison (called Matt) and a Courtney (Court). At least 2 of these boys chose their own nicknames when they got into school.
I had a HS classmate named Gaylord. This was a few years before the word “gay” meant homosexual, but he still got teased a lot for his name because it had “lord” in it. I wonder what happened in college and after - the teasing must have been off the charts.
About the names that can be found on keychains. I wonder if being an extrovert or an introvert has an impact on ehat kind of name a parent picks. Do extroverts tend to pick popular names and introverts pick more unique names?
Both of mine have family names. I like that their names have a tradition and are meaningful to us. I’m in the south and Ds is a composite name - she has always been called first name + middle name. Both are common but together it is unique. My niece was named after me. I love this.
@megpmom I must know a bunch of Anglophiles because I have nieces and nephews with the popular names you listed and I know kids with every one of the names you listed except Oscar.
My sil worked for a small local paper and one of her jobs was to write up the birth announcements. She couldn’t believe one family insisted on the misspelling: Jeffery.
http://www.nelsonearthday.net/nelson/
The founder of Earth Day was Senator Gaylord Nelson.
As a child, his nickname was ‘Happy’.
Oh, no, we are supposed to pretend that Jeffery is not a misspelling of the perfectly fine name of Jeffrey!
I know people who spell Michael as Micheal and Rachel as Rachael.
Does it bother people that their names are common? I’m perfectly fine with the fact that if you google my name (or husband’s or kids’ names) without any other identifying info, there are dozens of people with those names. Our last name is relatively common and none of our first names are unusual
DH had an Aunt Ethel. Anyone with that name will conjure up images if his aunt in my head
My first name was extremely common with the baby boom generation. I had 2 close HS friends as well as 8 sorority sisters who share my first name. Never bothered my much. I have never had my first name mispronounced, misspelled, made fun of, etc.
My maiden name was very unusual, though. My married last name is neither unusual nor common.
Funny thing is that my sister has a much less common (though not unusual or weird) first name. She kept our unuual family surname so her full name is quite unique. However she shares her full name with at least 2 other women. One is our nephew’s wife. The other is a woman who is also self employed in the same profession as my S.
Because my first name is a little dated (peaked in the late 1950s, can only think of 2 moderately famous people today with the same name and both are that age range), it does get misspelled on Starbucks cups. My D worked as a barista so I make sure to take a pic and send it to her - with a “get a load of this”!
Do you all like your first names? I don’t particularly like mine, though of course my mother does!
Don’t the Starbucks baristas often misspell the names on purpose? http://www.bustle.com/articles/39277-the-starbucks-barista-is-misspelling-your-name-on-purpose-gessika
And of course the infamous Mark with a C http://www.mtv.com/news/1970394/obvious-starbucks-name-fail/
Someone upthread wrote, regarding “weird spellings”: “And he’s white so weird spellings is not necessarily racist.”
Sorry, but that’s not the way racism (nor the lack thereof) works.
My mother was born in Ireland, and my name is spelled a traditional Irish way. I get lots of weird looks and comments about the spelling. I do not appreciate them, people are rude and ignorant to comment out loud on names of others. If you find my name strange, please keep it to yourself!