Rant: The Name Astrid in YA

Lately, it feels like, the name Astrid is popping up all over YA literature.  In the past month alone I’ve read two books with characters who are named Astrid, Ask the Passengers and Gone.

Repeating names isn’t something new in YA, considering that, unless you’re writing a fantasy book, authors tend to choose names that are relatively familiar to readers.  Evidently, names get repeated, which is okay.

So I should be okay with the name Astrid being repeated again in YA, right?

Wrong.  Astrid isn’t exactly a common name, (no offense to all the Astrid’s out there, I’m sure there are a lot of you), but I don’t even know any Astrid’s IRL. Astrid is a unique name, that’s why it’s so strange that there are so many characters named that, and that’s why I remember this anomaly.

What I’m really getting at here, is that if an author chooses a less popular, but still existent name, other authors should not choose that name so that we can avoid situations like these, when there are four books just off the top of my head with characters who have the same name.

Just to be clear, I love the name Astrid.  I think it’s a beautiful, and different name, which is why I think that it deserves to not be popularized by YA literature.