Rare names stand the test of time over popular choices

CHRISTENING a baby Oliver or Olivia may be fashionable at the moment, but research suggests the names will become outdated far sooner than rarer choices.

Parents are quick to resist popular names, the University of Michigan has found, with the most common options declining at an average rate of 1.6 per cent a year. In contrast rarer names, those that account for just one in 10,000 births in the UK, such as Orlando or Macy, are likely to rise in popularity by around 1.4 per cent annually.

It means that, within a generation, the most popular names today will seem old-fashioned, and so picking a rare name is the best way to futureproof a decision.

Dr Mitchell Newberry, an evolutionary biologist, studied 87 years of data from the US Social Security Administration baby name database, and found the more popular a name becomes, the less likely future parents will follow suit.

“My work shows that the diversity of names results from pressures against conformity,” said Dr Newberry.

“If people are always thirsting after the newest thing, then it’s going to create a lot of new things. Every time a new thing is created, it’s promoted, and so more rare things rise to higher frequency and you have more diversity in the population.”

According to the Office for National Statistics, the most common boy’s name in Britain is Oliver, followed by George and Arthur. For girls, Olivia tops the rankings, with Amelia and Isla close behind.

The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, also found clear trends in baby names, often related to current events. The popularity of the name Maverick rose after 1986 with the release of the film Top Gun, and is likely to see a spike again, following the recent sequel.

The name Emma peaked in popularity in the late 1800s, before declining through the first half of the 1900s, then shooting back up to be one of the most popular names of the early 2000s.

The same phenomenon also applied to dog breeds, the study showed, with breeds falling out of fashion as soon as they became too popular.

Dr Newberry, an assistant professor of complex systems, said the popularity of names acts like genes or organisms competing for scarce resources. In this case, the scarce resources are the minds of parents, he added.