These are some of the rarest baby names in England and Wales right now

We often share lists of the most popular baby names around the world.

That’s interesting, sure, but it’s not particularly helpful if you’re trying to give your baby a name no one else in their class will have… unless you look at those popular monikers as a list of what not to name your kid.

Perhaps this list will be more helpful.

According to the most recent data from the ONS, for babies born in 2017, there are more than 300,000 names that were so rare they were only given to three babies in England and Wales that year.

Now, if you’re mathematically minded, you might be thinking something along the lines of ‘wait, surely there are names that were only given to two babies that year, or one, or none at all… wouldn’t those be the rarest?’

You would be correct. There are names out there who haven’t been given to any babies at all, ever, but the tricky part is that we don’t know them. We’d have to go through a major process of elimination to figure those out, as well as coming up with new names that don’t yet formally exist. If you want your child to have a really unusual name, your best bet is making one up entirely from scratch. Best of luck.

The ONS only shares names given to at least three babies in an effort to protect the privacy of those unusually named kiddos. Essentially this stops you from easily tracking down the one baby named Puddingcup (we made that name up, please don’t try to search it) and making their parents change their child’s name because it’s the one you had chosen.

Now, as we mentioned, the number of names on the list are in the thousands, so we’re not going to list them all.

Handily enough, Cosmopolitan went through all the names and picked one for each letter of the alphabet for both boys and girls. We like the ones they picked, so here we go.

Again, bear in mind that there are at three babies currently holding each of these names, so if you have your heart set on a baby name shared by no one else, you’ll have to keep thinking.

But the names above are a good place to start. You could just change a couple of letters and voila, a new name. Sunday could be Sumday, Zephy becomes Zetty, and Hansel becomes Mansel. Easy.

In case you are interested in the common names to avoid, here are the most popular names in England in Wales for babies born in 2017.

They’re pretty lovely, but you will end up with three kids in your baby’s class with the same name if you choose one from this list.

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