Side Note: 7 Billion People

Hi, everyone. Yesterday morning I was checking my email and I saw that Yahoo posted an article that there are now 7 billion people in the world. Check out the article: http://news.yahoo.com/various-7-billionth-babies-celebrated-worldwide-064439018.html There are deeper issues in the article, ones that should be taken very seriously, (like, do all of these new babies have food, water, families, etc?), but I will leave that to you and your free time.

So how does this tie into a baby name blog? Because that means there are 7 billion people with their own unique name (or not-so-unique). I just wanted to say that, with 7 billion people in this world, names are bound to be used multiple times, as they have been used repeatedly countless times through history, and most likely the exact same combination of first and middle names will be repeated as well. There might be two Isabella Marie's born on the same day, or the one born in 2011 might share her name with one born in 1990. There are probably (just a guess) something like 100 Isabella Marie's born each year. In fact, there were 22,731 baby girls named Isabella in 2010 alone. Combine that with 2009's 22,222 and that equals 44,953. This does not even guarantee her surname will distinguish her between the other Isabella Marie's, taking into acount the fact that there are several families with each surname. For example, there are approximately 2,751,783 people with the last name Smith. This surname alone leaves a lot of possibilities for repeated names, beyond naming after family members. When I found out there was another woman with my first and last name I was angry. If I found out there were hundreds of others...well. That is why I whole-heartedly agree with giving a baby either a rare first name and common middle name, or a common first name and rare middle name, or even both rare names.

I guess my point is that, while popular names are generally well-liked, having fewer issues, and each name is special in its own right, expectant parents should be more cautious on what to name their child. With so many people in this world, I find it hard to believe a parent would willingly give their baby a name that so many others have. And really, there is no reason to, considering that throughout the world there are almost as many name options as there are people (when you include variants and word-names and other possibilities). A lot of great names can't even be found in the recent Social Security Administration's data, and I have listed several at the bottom of my page 2010 U.S. Girls Names With Less Than 100 Births. (By the way, it is nearly complete. Digging through the SSA list is no small task.)