Silly pregnancy info and Baby Names

So you find out your pregnant and the first thing you think you need is the What to Expect When Expecting book. Well in this day and age you can just sign up for their website which has all the same information as well as forums to discuss different things. They also have an app for your phone and they will send you emails with different information.

So I did this when I found out we were having a little one. I also got a few other free apps and signed up on thebump.com and other pregnancy websites. This means I get about 2-3 emails a day with pregnancy information. Sounds great right? Not really. One the info is VERY redundant. The information you receive is supposed to correspond to the part of pregnancy you are in. About 95% of the emails I received were links to articles about one of the following:
- Its ok to gain weight when you are pregnant
- Your weight gain is normal.
- It is ok to have sex while pregnant
- How to not gain to much weight
- How to reduce morning sickness. (none of these solutions worked for me)

Anyway, you can see how I just stopped reading the emails all together and they immediately were deleted. It has gotten a little better because I am almost done and some of the articles are starting to get interesting. But I am still getting about 3 emails a week about names. The name emails started coming around 24 weeks and at one point I was getting about 2 a day.

One of the things I don't understand about the name info they continually mention is how parents do not want to pick names in the top ten most popular. Tons of the articles are about alternative names if you like one of these. Maybe I don't get it because in 1987 (the year I was born) Amanda was number 3 on the list. James has been in the top ten until 1993. We both grew up with other kids in our class with our names. And while we both did not like being Amanda B. or James B. the main reason was that the other kid got to be only Amanda or James with out a last initial. I would have been totally fine if Amanda Thomas was called Amanda T. but she was just called Amanda (we were in the same class 3 years in a row). Boys are a little different and when they get older they just go by last names. Now that I am older I have run into less Amandas, probably because it was only in the top for a few years.

With the increasing popularity of "unique" names and spellings the names in the top ten have less kids with that actual name than there was 20 years ago. James and I have no problem with the fact that the name we picked (Emily) is #6. Example: Emily was #6 in 2011 with 7,375 babies with this name out of 1,000,000 where when Amanda was #6 in 1978 there was 12,488 babies with that name out of 1,000,000. That means that less than 1% is named Emily even though it is ranked 6th.

Maybe I have a weird opinion but I looked at those alternatives because I was curious. I hated all of them.

Does anyone else have a popular name and found it to be horrible? Not that we plan on changing our name choice I am just curious.