The most popular boy's names in America at the moment, based on actual births in 2006, are:
- Jacob
- Michael
- Joshua
- Ethan
- Matthew
- Daniel
- Christopher
- Andrew
- Anthony
- William
Please note the trend toward Biblical names -- Jacob, Joshua and Daniel are hard-core Old Testament, while Matthew is apostolic, and that's not counting at least three saints on the list.
And, of course, Ethan stems from Ethan Allen, famous Revolutionary War hero and furniture brand. Ethan is also the most popular boy's name in both British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
But you're not interested in that -- you want to know what the most popular girl's names are. Okay:
- Emily
- Emma
- Madison
- Isabella
- Ava
- Abigail
- Olivia
- Hannah
- Sophia
- Samantha
I see a couple of trends here. First, the surnames-for-first-names trend seems to have run its course. Only Madison remains in the top ten, as fewer parents name their girls Ashley, Courtney, Kelly and Jordan.
Second, the French trend of the 1960s is dead. Michelle, Nicole and the other jeune-filles of my school days are all grown up and anchoring the news on NPR or something.
Third, there seems to be a return to old-fashioned names, as Emily (Dickinson), Abigail (Adams), Hannah (Montana) and the like proliferate.
Finally, we still seem to like the first names of celebrity actors and actresses -- Matt (Dillon), Daniel (Day-Lewis), Sophia (Loren), Olivia (de Havilland) and Ava (Gabor).
I found the top 10 lists here --
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ -- on the website of the Social Security Administration.
In 1953, when I was born, the top 10 boy's names were Robert, James, Michael, John, David, William, Richard, Thomas, Charles and Gary; the top 10 girl's names were Mary, Linda, Deborah, Patricia, Susan, Barbara, Nancy, Karen, Pamela and Sandra. (Kevin and Sean and Kimberly and Jennifer came to high visibility about a decade later as I recall.)
The oldest year for which I was quickly able to find a list was 1880, the year my grandfather was born (he was 39 when my dad was born and my dad was 34 when I was born, so our three generations reach pretty far back.) The male list was similar to my birth year except that Michael and Gary didn't make the top 20 and Frank was pretty popular. The female list was notable for including one currently popular name -- Emma -- and some that we don't hear about much any more, including Minnie, Ida and Bertha.
Wikipedia, in an article on the regional popularity of certain names, says Nadia is one of the most popular names in Pakistan, while the third most popular name in Australia's Northern Territory is Lachlan.
Luke, Lukas, Lucas or Luka, depending on where you are is one of the most popular names of Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Malta, Slovenia and Switzerland. It tops the list in four of them.
Emma is the most popular girl's name in Belgium, Finland, France and Switzerland, and second in Denmark, Ireland and Scotland. It makes the top 10 in Norway, the Netherlands and Italy.
Hannah is third in Denmark and seventh in Austria. In England the third, fourth and sixth, respectively, are Olivia, Emily and Sophie. Sophia is all over the place.
Are we seeing globalization of naming trends?
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