'unique names' of yesterday...

[caramelskies.livejournal.com]

names that start out original but turn up everywhere!
I know people that named their kids names that they had never heard:

Whitney, Megan, Makinsey, Makayla, Bayla, Ashlynn, Tyler, Caidyn, Jordan, Madison,Aiden, Kaylie, Maylie, Bailey, Amy, etc.

granted, these kids are in their 20's now but what names do you know that started out as different and turned into huge trends?

Comments

[bornto-fly.livejournal.com]

Katelyn - my friend's mom named her little sister this in '93 and she's far from "trendy" Now it seems like one of the more popular names for girls.

My mom had never heard of anyone named Lindsay until I was born, and then about six months later, five other Lindsays (or Lindseys) were born in my town. It's kinda creepy. There was only one girl who was older than me with my name, but there were a ton in the grades below mine.

[mystickiwi.livejournal.com]

My parents named me Hannah because they wanted to be unique without being different, and they said that all the children they were meeting had names like Tiffany and Whitney. Now Hannah's really high up on the list.

(This is also partially demographic, we were living in CA when I was born, and when we moved to NH when I was 1ish my parents said they started meeting a lot more kids with the name Hannah)

[coolteamblt.livejournal.com]

My name is Katherine, and my mother swears up and down that she asked the nurse if there were any Katherines in the hospital. I think she forgot to ask about Kaitlyn :( I was one of six Kates/Katies in my history class in high school. Three of us were Katherines, and three of us were Kaitlyn.

[sing4th.livejournal.com]

My name is Heather, and I was born in 1979. In the 1970's, it was 8th in popularity (according to http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager) 1980's: 10th 90's:45... and steadily declining ever since. It first appeared in the 1930's but never broke the top 100 till the 70's when it was so wildly popular. I was used to being one of 4, or 5 in my larger classes throughout high school, as well. :( This is why, even though I love the name Emily, I will not be using it. If I had this much saturation with my name being ranked 8-10th.... what would life be like for a hypothetical daughter whose name is 1st or 2nd across the nation?

Amelia. Amelia is 82nd. I can live with that!

[coolteamblt.livejournal.com]

Amelia Margaret is my sister's name. She hated it, because of the Amelia Bedelia books. I personally would have traded her in a heartbeat, because I hated being one of a kazillion Kates/Katies.

[czk.livejournal.com]

my name is Katie (Katharina), and here in the Netherlands it is very uncommon. I had never met anyone else in this country who had the same name until about a year ago :)

[coolteamblt.livejournal.com]

I like the name Katharina. It flows so nicely! Unfortunately, in the US, Kate/Katie/Katherine/Kathleen/Kaitlyn are all very common. It's more popular with girls younger than me (I'm 21), but it was bad enough at my age.

My mother's friend when I was in kindergarten was named Katy. When both of our families got together, they called me Ekatya.

[coolteamblt.livejournal.com]

It was pretty harsh. Officially, the most common names in my graduating class were Jessica and Michael, but that was mainly because of our given names. I'm decently sure that there were more of the Katherine/Kathleen/Kate/Katie/Kaitlyn's than Jessica. I really like the name Katharina, but it's waaaay too close to my name to use, obviously. At least Katharina could go by Rina or something, I guess.

[anaphylexis.livejournal.com]

Me! I knew no one named Alexis when I was growing up. In fact lots of people hadn't heard of it. My name was mispronounced often and I could never find my name preprinted on anything. But now it's very popular. I hear it quite often on young girls, there's even a little girl in my (small) apartment complex with my name. I checked the babynamewizard.com/namevoyager and saw that my name peaked in 2003 at 7th in popularity, but when I was born in the 80's it was 109.

[feelslike-2day.livejournal.com]

my parents named me jennifer in '87 after my grandmother, not knowing it would become the number one name. I still have problems with being one of five jennifers. I want to ban the name jennifer from north america. I switched to Jena, which is just as bad.

[levis-jules.livejournal.com]

Jennifer, Michelle & Jessica- there are sooooooo many of them from the 80's!!!!

I have several cousins & friends that are Jennifer's & any variation there of & I can think of a million Michelle's or middle name Michelles!

[feelslike-2day.livejournal.com]

it's become incredibly annoying, especially when one of your best friends is also named Jennifer.

[coolteamblt.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. As a Kayt, I ended up going by "Y" in high school (like, Kate with a 'y') because my group of friends had two Kates and three Katies in it.

[eleanorgrace.livejournal.com]

I know an Adam whose parents claim they didn't realize it would be a particularly common name (in the early 1980s). His brother is named Joseph, so they clearly weren't trying super hard to avoid common names, though.

In the sort-of opposite direction, I'm an Eleanor, which in my experience is quite uncommon (though I had another in my ballet class for a couple of years; she went by Nellie, which I think is kind of ugly). Whenever I meet people in the real world they give me compliments and tell me how unusual yet pretty it is (or that they have grandmothers named Eleanor).
However, frequently on baby name boards I see people claiming that it's "trendy" or "popular." I'm extremely skeptical of that assertion.
I don't know if maybe people are being hyper-sensitive about name popularity and don't want to use a name that's increased at all in popularity recently (as Eleanor has a bit).
For a girl's name, being ranked around 250 means that only a few thousand kids were named that in the year, which, in all likelihood, does not mean there will be four in your child's class at school.

[searlait.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, it's becoming trendy for cats. I know a couple Eleanor kitties.

I love the name Eleanor!

[searlait.livejournal.com]

Savannah's starting to break into the top 100 and I've met more and more little girls named Savannah. It's starting to freak me out a little bit. When my mom named me, it wasn't popular and it came to her in a dream. Started out unique to her.

[jordle.livejournal.com]

I'm a girl Jordan. When I was born (In 1980) there were no girl Jordan's (Actually there were no Jordans at all) and after i was born suddenly all these girls were given my name. My mother has been forever pissed. It happened with my older sister too (Courtney) and when my little sister was born my mother decided that she wanted her name to be unique so when she would book her into places she would say her name was Brooke. Her name is actually Brooklyn.

[jordle.livejournal.com]

I meant to say there were no Jordan's in my town (Of about 30,000). Not there were no Jordan's at all :P

[singhappy02.livejournal.com]

While my name isn't exactly uncommon (there have been Kristins...or forms of...forever), the spelling isn't the "norm" or wasn't when my mom named me. She didn't know of anyone named Kristin, and had only run into one Kristen in her life (granted, she was 18 at the time....) so she went with it.

I was one of four in middle school, but the other three were Kristen...so my name has CONSTANTLY been misspelled, and I've given up on correcting people. Or I had, until I started to go by Krissie....now I fight the Krissy (looks too damn much like Kissy....) battle like it's my job.