Baby naming is hard. Not only do you have to find a nice name that has meaning to you, will carry your child well through life, agree with another human being, but you also have to find a name that doesn’t have any negative associations. On top of that, many people are worried about the popularity of a name. Will our son be one of 4 Aidens in his class? Will he hate me for giving him an “out of the ordinary” name? Truly, you can’t predict exactly how your child will feel about their name. All you can do is the best you can!

    While I believe that you should totally own it if you love a popular name, I also know that lots of parents are looking for rare alternatives. Sometimes it can be difficult to find real rare alternatives when the internet is full of misinformation and modern mashup names. I did my best to compile some great alternatives to the top 10 boy names in the US, and two others (Aiden and Jackson) that aren’t in the top ten, but if you combine all of their spellings, are more popular than people think. Check out the Social Security website if you want to check out where your favorite names rank, or look at the rankings by state. 

    All of the alternative names mentioned in this post are outside of the top 200, and most are outside of the top 1000 (unranked on the Social Security Administrations website). Click here if you would like to see the girl version of this post!