Parents take a long time to choose the perfect name for their baby. Some parents use family names, and others go for traditional names. You might also look at the most popular names currently and choose from those.
Then, there are parents who want something completely unique and original that’s like no one else’s name.
The name might be something that you come up with from any number of places, or it could be that you take an otherwise common or known name and decide to spell it differently.
Choosing your baby’s name is about more than just having something cute or something trendy that you like at the moment. This is something your child will carry with them for the rest of their lives. With that as a consideration, below are some of the good and the bad of going with a really unique name for your baby.
The Pros of Unique Baby Names
Some of the upsides of giving your baby a unique name include the following:
- Your baby may not ever have the same name as someone in their class at school or later in life at work. That can simplify things. Your child will always stand out in that sense. You’ll often see when it comes to common names there may be more than one of the same in a classroom throughout a child’s life.
- Your child is creating their own legacy because they’re starting out with something that’s unique about them.
- Having a different type of name can be a conversation starter. That’s good when kids are younger, but also when they’re older. Think about how tough it can be to start a conversation as an adult when it comes to everything from dating to job interviews. A unique name can be an immediate conversation starter because people might be curious about where the name came from. On the other hand, with a common name, no one’s ever going to wonder where your parents got it.
- If your child’s name is unique now, it’ll be easier for people to find them later in life. For example, if you’re looking for a William Smith online, that’s going to be a lot tougher than trying to find someone whose name is completely distinctive.
- It’ll be easy for your child later on in their life to personalize things like their email address or their username.
The Cons of Unique Baby Names
Of course, as with anything, going unique with a baby name is going to have some downsides, too, including:
- It may end up being hard for everyone around your child throughout their life to spell or even say their name. Sometimes, even when it’s unique, it can be harder to remember for whatever reason—maybe that’s because it doesn’t seem as natural, so it doesn’t stay on the tip of the tongue. Your child might end up feeling embarrassed at different points of their life, like the first day of school, when their teacher is consistently saying their name wrong.
- Children might not enjoy having a distinct name. A lot of times, kids have a preference for something simpler.
- It might take your child longer to learn how to spell their name, especially if it’s not an easy one to sound out.
- You have to remember that standing out isn’t always the best thing. For example, when your child is an adult, they might not want to be found easily.
- If you want to order things with your child’s name on them, like clothes, for example, or stationary, it’ll always have to be customized.
- Kids can be mean, as can adults, for that matter. Depending on what you name your child, there’s always the chance that they could get made fun of and teased for it. Kids tend to zero in on anything that can make someone an easy target, unfortunately.
- There’s research showing that non-traditional names can limit future career growth. Research from The New York Post has shown that non-traditional names can impact your child’s fate from the start. You certainly don’t want to choose something that’s going to limit career opportunities in the future.
If you’ve gone over these pros and cons and you still have a unique name in mind, there’s always the option of using a simpler nickname, of course. Unique names can often lead to the best nicknames, or if your child gets older and doesn’t love going by their name, they could also go by their middle name, so try to keep that fairly simple if you’re going with something out of the ordinary for their first name.
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