I have an extremely common name, but I go by the nickname version which is luckily much less common. It’s only annoying the first day of class before my prof asks “Do you want to go by anything else?” But my preferred name is also one letter away from the name of one of my best male friends, so we both always turn when someone yells for us.
You could always call her “Cinders”. 
We got a lot of “That sounds ethnic” about “Sophia” from our relatives.
This kind of floored us, actually. For one thing, we were like, “It does?” For another thing, we were like, “So what if it does?”
How is “That’s ethnic” supposed to be a criticism of a name? We were really kind of disappointed in people when they said this.
Speaking of people talking about others’ choice of names in general, my wife was getting really upset when people would take it upon themselves to offer critical comments about names she had chosen. I would request that people think of it this way. When someone tells you a name they have chosen a name, X, for their new baby, your role is not to say whether you like the name or not. That’s not what they’re asking. Your role is to celebrate the fact that X has been/is soon to be born. And that’s the entirity of your role.
-FrL-
My daughter is an Elinor. (She isn’t an Ellie - she’s a Nell). When she was about three I went into see my OB-GYN for a checkup. He said “I thought you were nuts, but after I delivered your Eleanor, I’ve delivered 20 in the past three years.”
She is the only one in her class to date, I think that she’ll be a year or three ahead of the class of Ellie. I do have a good friend with a daughter nearly the exact same age who is “the other Eleanor.”
I have a theory on Ellie and Emma - I think Emily was overdone, but people still liked the sound of the name. So they started looking for a name that was similar sounding but not as popular as Emily.
Yeah, it happened to us too. We liked the sound of Emily, and when she was born, she just obviously seemed to be an Emily. The next week, we discovered that it is the single most popular name in the US–we had named our daughter Jennifer! The funny thing is, we don’t know many Emilys at all–there are lots more Emmas and Olivias and Mayas. Maybe all the Emilys live in New York or something. Anyway she changed her name to Joe a few months back, so maybe it will all be irrelevant.
Then my BIL named his new daughter Ellie (just Ellie, no Eleanor or Ellen or Helen)–they’re only about 6 months apart, and it gets very tongue-twisting when they play together.
You may be on to something. My wife liked Emily, but I did not, and I reminded her as well that my only other serious relationship had been with someone named Emily. That turned her off the name real quick. But I do believe it was not long afterwards that my wife suggested Ella.
-FrL-
I think that’s spot on. I’ve always like Emily, but it’s overdone. So with our last baby, we scouted around and settled briefly on Amelia as a similar alternate. Of course, checking that showed that millions of other people had the same idea.
So we went with Jillian.
And my 3 year old son is named Alexander, but we call him Xander. Thought that would be relatively unique, but everyone I run into has a nephew named Xander somewhere…
They’re grandparents, it’s part of their job to get names mixed up. Mine do it all the time, and none of my siblings names are close to eachother. Heck, my mom does it.
“Ryan! I mean, Mike, I mean Robert. Damnit, I was right the first time.”
Did she get the “Jillian Jiggs” nickname, too? 
waves to fellow namealike
After all my names were shot down we picked a pretty common name. I guess because of all the “unique but everyone has them names” his common name is unique.
The only problem with a trendy name is that when you get older people can figure out how old you are.
I think the first batch of Tylers (my nephews name) are in high school.
My folks tried to do the same thing with my name and my sister’s.
By the time my sister was a teenager, there were plenty of people with her name around (it peaked at #10 on the popularity list in the 1990s, and she had a number of friends with the same name).
My name got popular (less so) when I was a bit older. There was one famous actress with my name when I was born, and I didn’t meet any others in person until I was in high school. Since then, tho, it has become quite popular: people tell me about their nieces with my name, it often turns up as a character name on soap operas and reality shows, one extremely famous and current actress has a very similar name, etc etc. There are so many variant spellings I can’t tell how popular it is, but it seems quite trendy.
I have worked in offices with multiple Beverlys, Jeans, Roses, Dianes, and Lizes of different ages (not to mention Toms and Tims and Jims and Daves and Franks and Johns and Mikes and Jasons and Nicks and Andrews - why are boys more often named common things?).
And I never knew any Emilys growing up but I am currently friends with about six.
As far as I’m concerned there’s not much you can do: throughout your kid’s life s/he will meet people who share their name, and remember them, and then their name won’t seem so unique any more. You have no idea what’s going to be popular in ten/twenty/fifty years. Just pick a name you like.
Yup. My youngest brother is in ninth grade, and I guess most of the other Tylers from Little League are there too.
Attempted-but-timed-out edit:
My parents have occasionally expressed regret [out of my brother’s hearing] that they gave him a name that was, unbeknownst to them, becoming so popular. The only other names I remember them thinking about were Taylor (too much in the last-name-as-first-name trend for my taste) and Trevor.
You’re a beautiful and unique snowflake. Just like everyone else.
In 15 years, Ella went from #945 to #22.
So far (as of 2005) the more popular spelling of my name has only gotten into the top 600; my spelling and my nickname haven’t broken the top 1000. Very cool.
When my brother and I were named, neither name was common at all. Mine stayed that way. Justin wasn’t so lucky.
–gigi, aka Gwendolen
We’re struggling with the same thing right now – what to name our kiddo, who’s due in August. We couldn’t get the clearest picture, but it looks like we need a boys’ name. Trouble is, our last name starts with S and ends with -on – we’re not thrilled with alliterative names, and we definitely don’t want rhyming names. We don’t want something terribly popular, but we don’t want something weird. We like classic names. We’d like to like the meaning of the name, and have the name itself mean something to us (Biblical, or family name, or something).
We had a girl’s name all ready, but we are having the hardest time with boys’ names! Rotten kid. 
At least it’s not like my kid’s preschool friend, who was named Caitlin Kathleen. 
Start a thread here and you will get some great ideas. I like Avery but classic names? Andrew, Daniel, Matthew, Nathaniel. Those are all handsome and have nickname options.
Aren’t those actually the same name in Gaelic? Ouch.
Exactly. I am a fan of classic names, and so although I know Joshua is right at the top of the popularity list, we just decided to give our son that name, anyway. I figured that at least classic names wear well!
I was at the library for toddler story time yesterday, and 2 of the little tots there were named Henry! Some of the classic names you would NEVER expect to be trendy seem to be coming back. So, I think you are right…it’s getting harder to avoid a trendy name. I’ll bet neither of those moms expected to be running into other little Henrys!
I wanted a non made up name that would be memorable and rare for my daughter, we chose Matilda. There is a movie starring a character named Matilda which was based on the very fine book by the same name by Roald Dahl. It’s almost unheard of… we get tons of compliments on the name but I have yet to run into another little Matilda running around, though she does get the occasional ‘Waltzing Matilda’ joke. ;> Her middle name is Dagny.