OK, poll is up. I included a separate section for the newer African influenced names as some people seem to have a special dislike of them, but I do not think we have had any responses with people names like that (guess we are a pretty pasty white board for the most part).
Poll answer: it’d probably be too late to give a kid a new first name since I’d want to adopt older, but if they wanted to take my last name, they’d get it in all its French hooker glory.
Both my first name and my maiden last name are common names with uncommon spellings. For decades I have been experiencing exactly what jools describes. I even start by saying “I’ll spell it for you” and they simply do not listen to me. When I got married I took my husband’s last name, which everyone knows they don’t know how to spell, so they wait for me to spell it. How refreshing! My first name I’ve come to terms with people misspelling, since the common version is simply one vowel off (a Y instead of an I). The only time it irks me is when family members misspell it. Come on, people! Some of you have known me for more than 40 years!!!
ETA - if I had kids they’d be getting common names with the most common spelling.
My name is a old name that is out of fashion, which sounds like it should belong to a supreme court justice. I didn’t like it growing up, but I like it now.
We can jump on him together. I may not be all that fond of the deliberate misspellings of common names (“Dystnee”) but ethnic or cultural names or just unusual names should not be eradicated for the sake of other people’s convenience.
I may complain about my name on occasion but I do love it and it has a beautiful meaning - the “girl with the beautiful eyes”.
Heh, I just tried that link. There are 1 or fewer people in the US with my last name!
Nz is a pretty unusual name here, yes. 
I just checked mine. 1576 people with my first name and 2288 people with my last name.
And 1 or fewer people with the full name together. Is that me? How can it be fewer?!
How can they be so precise?
I’m not sure whether this answer’s the OPs question, but my last name is very rare in this country, and is hard to spell and pronounce by most people here. Naturally my son has the same last name. I figure he will have the same trouble with it I had all my life, but I got used to it, and now I am proud of it.
I think they go on mathematical probability, based on how common each name is. They state that there is only 1 person with my first and last name, but I know of two others, one who is married to my brother-in-law, and one a stranger who, according to Google has a book published.
I’ve got a normal name. I’ve also got a frequently mis-spelled name.
The spelling of my name isn’t strange–it’s just less common than the other spelling. My mother wanted the version that goes with our German last name, as opposed to the other version.
It’s a good name, and the spelling on my birth certificate is the spelling which means me.
I don’t mind spelling it most of the time, but I’ll admit that I get cranky when people send things to my e-mail address (which contains the correct spelling of my first name) that spell my name wrong within them.
Hmm… There is a difference between the poll question and the poll in the thread, at least when I posted on it.
I do love my name, and I wouldn’t change it. But it is a unique name, and I have two things regarding naming my kids:
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No names after the kids’ parents (meaning me and whoever the other half is). I want to break my “family rule”. Yes, even my creative spelled name covers this rule. I might make an exception regarding grandparents, since there are so few in my family in the newer generations that have carried on my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ names, despite the above rule.
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I like really “old-fashioned” names. Or commonly uncommon names.
I got the same exact results for first name and combined first/last name. Those seem to be the lower limit of what the site can calculate. There are not nearly 1576 people in the U.S. with my first name and there probably aren’t that many with yours either. That would be an average of over 30 per state and I know it is way lower than that for mine. I am the only one with my first and last name in the whole world as I far as I know.
Maybe not. Although there are loads of people (way more than I expected ) with my first name, only 394 in the US with my last name.
Hah! The site says there’s one other person in the US with my first and last name, and it is correct! My father’s brother’s son’s nephew’s son has my first name. He’s much younger than I and has only recently begun to deal with comments from others about his strangely spelled first name and simply strange, and apparently difficult to pronounce, last name. 
I mean, awwww. 
It looks like the lowest result it can give for any first name is 1576, and the lowest result it can give for any last name is 117.
My first name is common, but “fewer than 117 people with my last name”.
So 1 or fewer people with my full name also.
It also said “fewer than 117” for mine. Seems too coincidental…
Plugged in maiden and married last name, and in each case, one or fewer people in this country have my full name. Maiden last name is not terribly uncommon, married last name is very uncommon, first name is too, so yeah.
The opposite happens to me. I have an uncommon first name, but shorten it to something more common, so I’d say, for example:
“Hey, I’m Rob.”
“Oh hi, Robert. So glad you came.”
“(Samuel L. Jackson voice) Motherfucker, did I say Robert?”
Most annoying because the name they’re assuming I have is, of course, wrong! Gah.
Same thing happens when your actual name is a form of another name. My husband’s name is something like Jimmy. That’s his actual name - it’s not James and he doesn’t like to be called Jim. Happens all the time- gets a new job , paycheck is made out to James, people decide if he’s OK with Jimmy ,then Jim must also be fine.