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 daughter be one of 4 Olivias in her class? Will she hate me for giving her 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 good alternatives to the top 10 girl names in the US, and two others (Aria and Lily) 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).