Here’s my advice: if everyone likes your baby name, don’t use it. That is if having a unique baby name is important to you. See, here everyone is saying that they love Violet, they love flower names and you know what that tells me? Pretty soon kindergartens across American will be literal gardens of little girls.

When we were thinking of names for Noah, we should have known when every single person (besides my father who thought we should name him Vic) said it was a great name. That was the best indicator we could have had that Noah would go through life with the first initial of his last name tacked on at every roll call.

Now my sister, she named her son Flaviano. You can imagine the reactions that got. (We call him Frankie.) Then when she said she was naming her daughter Lucia, half the people she told — specifically the non-Italian half — just looked puzzled. But that was good because here’s the other truth I have to give you about baby names: once the baby’s here, people tend to like the names they didn’t like before.

Flaviano? We were horrifed! Frankie? Barely better! But he is the cutest little meatball of a Frankie you ever did see and now I love that name. (I always liked Lucia so that one wasn’t a hard sell for me.)

Interestingly, in my oddball friendship community, there are no Madisons because my friends eschew trends. Or at least they try to. (Emma’s mother and I often lament the fact that we didn’t realize that Noah and Emma were on the way up when we hit on ‘em for our kids’ names.) But then within this same small crunchy-granola group, where everyone goes to the same co-op, knows the same midwives, and keeps track of the gossip at the two or three acceptable preschools, we have three children named Indigo. And one named Azure.

This demonstrates the truth of my “well received predicts popularity” theory. While the rest of the world may frown on naming a child for a particular shade of blue, among my people this rates applause. Same goes for Atticus. Although Atticus isn’t popular in my immediate circle, we all know various children named Atticus who are growing up on peace bumperstickers and soy.

(I wouldn’t be surprised to meet a child named after grains like Millet or Quinoa at the playground where Noah takes his homeschool classes, but my daughter may be the only Madison sitting in those baby swings.)

To sum up, if originality is important to you — and I’m not saying it should be — go for the name you love that gets the most blank stares or outright grimaces.

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