Last month when I was at the La Leche League meeting, one of the mothers referred to her daughter named Sophia, and I started to think that as much as I love the idea of daughters named Beauty and Wisdom (Bella and Sophia), the name Sophia might be too common.
Then Chad came home from a work meeting and showed me this site; it’s a page on national social security administration website that shows popular baby names by year. (Curious that baby names would be a piece of social security information that people would be interested in!) Yup, in 2006, which is the most current data available, Sophia was in the top ten. The name Sophia made it into the top 20 in 2003 and has been gaining in popularity every year since. That means that a kid named Sophia will run into other Sophia’s for the rest of her life.
So now, we’re considering other names: Veronica, Roxanne, Beatrice, Veda…
I’ve gone through every girl name in a book of 10,000 girl names and that’s all we could even barely agree upon. Sophia is not COMPLETELY out of the mix, but its current popularity is a big strike against it.
The boy’s name is settled – but the thought of having a boy is unsettling.
As is the thought that no matter how much I thought Chad and I were making a conscious autonomous name choice, that clearly our tastes are part of a larger social dynamic. Check out your birth year at the same site to see the names of all your friends in grade school!