Among the people I know, there seem to be two camps: the people who try to give their children unique and interesting names, and the people who try to give their children nice, normal, blend-into-the-crowd names. The former signs off on the birth certificate only to find out that their special snowflake name has suddenly become the nom du jour for celebrities and everybody else, and the latter already expected their kid to be thinking of themselves as the modern equivalent of "Jennifer P." until death (quick now: think of all the Jennifers you went to school with. Were there multiple Jennifer S.'s? Did they have to work out who would be Jen, Jenny, Jenni-with-an-I? That's the fate of the modern Michaela).
This well-meaning article offers some guidance to choosing the name that's right for your child, but you know what? Never mind. Really. Only a couple of people I know have managed to find the perfect balance of lovely and unusual, and they're probably just slightly ahead of their time. Every name we picked became immediately popular as soon as we said it out loud, and the middle names we settled on were downright obscure until magically, the year each of those children were born, they shot up to the heights of the Social Security Administration's list of popular baby names. A good friend chose completely outdated old lady names for her kids, and each time, some damn movie star came along two months later and stole her names.
My sister, who doesn't have kids yet, has recently lamented that she gave some of her favorite kid names to her cats. I sympathize; I did the same thing with a car. You really just can't win the name game, no matter what your strategy is. Just pick a name you like, and don't tell anyone so you won't have to listen to them try to talk you out of it.
