Novel, bizarre and painfully common: Here's who shouldn't get a say naming babies

She wanted a contemporary name and we chose to honour her sainted grandmother instead.

Our other kids seem reasonably content with what they were given although one struggles to get her name pronounced by others in quite the way she likes it pronounced.

Naming babies is diabolical.

You tell people early and they tell you about a kid with that name who was a bully or a bedwetter.

You tell people when the actual baby is born and they get offended they weren't consulted.

And here is the absolute worst thing I ever did as an incipient grandmother.

Our son-in-law and our daughter, the one who thinks her name is boring and old-fashioned, revealed what they were planning to call their first baby.

And what did Bad Grandma do? I said I thought it was awful.

I am the worst (fortunately, she just told me to bugger off. Someone who gave her child the name of the most famous woman in the world apparently had no right to an opinion.)

Here we are four years later and not only is the child delightful, but the name is both modern and ancient. I hate to admit it but I was very very wrong.

A friend has just told her own kid she hates the name he's picked for his incoming daughter. He's cranky. She's sticking by her guns. She'll get used to it, I am confident.

I'm reminded of this because the McCrindle list of top baby names for 2023 was just released.

The most popular names list has obsessed me for decades - partly because it was one of the first ever jobs I was given as a baby journalist; partly because I then had three kids to name and partly because I am a judgmental old lady who has views about what makes a good name.

Last year, I was outraged about the names techno-narcissist Elon Musk inflicted on his own children. Techno Mechanicus. Why would you do that to anybody let alone your beloved child?

So I interviewed a German mathematician Anne Kandler from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology about what we call our kids.

She told me that most of us like to give familiar names to our children.

She analysed a data set of thousands of Australian names over 60 years and found that the names we choose are contagious. I mean, not Techno. No one wants to catch that. But the McCrindle list explains exactly what she means.

Take Miles, a name I've always associated with Brideshead Revisited, although not, as far as I recall, ever having appeared as a character on that period drama.

So you hear that someone down the road has called their kid Miles and you think, I quite like that. And suddenly that name rockets from position 101 in 2022 to number 48 in 2023.

We have what Kandler calls an "an anti-novelty bias". Which is why, according to McCrindle, we have called our sons Oliver time and time again.

It's been the number one name for boys for 11 years and in 2023, nearly 2000 babies were Olivered.

But we are also very daring. Ollie has now entered the top 100. My judgmental self (ahem, the whole being) is wondering whether we can have Ollie as a prime minister, governor of the Reserve Bank or host of Masterchef (actually, scrap that. We have Andy and he does quite nicely).

Isla, surely after the fabulously hilarious, talented and very rich Isla Fisher, is the top name for girls.

Research this year shows that baby-naming still causes trouble in families. US researchers interviewed nearly 50 heterosexual couples about how they arrived at the name for their baby.

Christina Sue, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas, and her colleagues say women do more work researching baby names. They also do more work trying to come to an agreement with their partners.

But when they tell their naming story to others, it's a story that downplays men's power and makes them appear egalitarian in their decision-making.

My favourite part of the research reveals the story of a couple where he was *very* keen on a name and she was much less so. In the end, she convinced herself it was right for her too. Self-deception right there.

As Sue and colleagues put it: "Stories of 'easy' collaboration both oversimplify and mystify the process through which couples arrive at naming (and presumably other) decisions."

I have a very close friend who, with her husband, developed a short list of names.

When she woke up from a dramatic caesarean, the baby had a label on the bassinet. Last name correct. First name nothing which had ever been discussed previously.

Turns out the baby was saved from having the very fussy name of a then-popular pop singer.

Narrow escape for all. The researchers call this hijacking - they found men did this very thing - changing the names while in hospital just because they wanted to or they liked the name they alone picked.

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So, after having three kids and three grandkids, what advice do I have for those about to name a baby?

Don't ask your parents what they think. Don't ask your friends what they think. Don't be too influenced by influencers (there are truly only so many Andys you can have in your life). Please don't go for names with previously acquired bad reputations.

Choose what you love - but please make sure there aren't 20 other Ollies in the same class. Your child will be grateful.

Even the one named after the most famous woman in the world. Turns out the name was so old-fashioned, she was the only one in her entire school.