At the beginning of this year, the UK ’s Office for National Statistics let it be known that they wouldn’t be issuing their annual lists of most popular names due to recessional budget cuts, and a collective moan was heard across the name-o-sphere.  (Can you imagine what would happen if our Social Security list didn’t appear one Mother’s Day?) 

Well, I don’t know what happened–maybe the uproar was too deafening–but suddenly,  nine months later, their lists of top 100 boys and 100 girls names  in England and Wales have now materialized.  Definitely a case of better late than never.

Once upon a time I used to think that, since we share the same language, the Yanks and the Brits would have similar taste in names.  That was before I married a Brit myself and it came to naming our daughter, when I saw just how different our perceptions of most names were.  And though things have evened out to some degree with the rise of the Internet and the international sharing of opinions, looking at the top English girls’ names today (we’ll take up the boys’ next week), we can see that there is still quite a divide.  (more…)

When I lived in London in the 90s, I was gobsmacked (astonished in British) by how different the baby names were there. It wasn’t like they used names Americans had never heard of – exotic ones like Pema or invented ones like Puma – but that they used some of the familiar English names far more often than did parents in the U.S.

Clementine and Hugo, for instance, were the most fashionable names of that day in the U.K., names I’d rarely heard stateside. Clementine was pronounced with an –een ending, which removed it from the “Oh My Darling” association – not that many Brits carried that association.

Some of the names popular in Britain and not in the U.S. are similarly free of connections that may damn them in America: Jemima, say, and Archie. Others are old Celtic or Cornish or Welsh names that never crossed the ocean, such as Tamsin and Callum.

And then there are those names on this list that are classics or short forms heard in America, but not as fashionably – I’m thinking of Forence, for example, and Freddie, Lucy (yes, still) and Louis.

Based on another entertaining tour through the London Telegraph birth announcements from the past few months, here are some names that are stylish in the U.K. right now.

Girls

ALICE
CECILY
CHARIS or CARYS
CRESSIDA
DARCY or DARCEY
DAVINA
EDIE
ELIZA
FLORA
FLORENCE
FREYA
GENEVIEVE
GEORGIANA or GEORGINA
IMOGEN
JEMIMA
LUCY
MAISIE
NATASHA
OCTAVIA

(more…)

One of the downsides–admittedly a fairly minor one–to living in such a heavily populated country as the U.S. is that it takes the Social Security Administration five months to tally up the year’s baby name stats, while some states and other countries put out their results even before the New Year’s Eve ball drops on Times Square.

The full UK report will be arriving any day now, but in the interim, there’s a survey of 380,000 babies born in Britain in 2008 that can give us some strong clues.  For girls, the Top 5 names are Olivia, Ruby, Grace, Emily, and Jessica, with  a noteworthy number of nickname names further down–Evie, Katie, Ellie, Millie, Gracie, Rosie, Abbie and Tilly.  Names hot over there that haven’t taken off to the same degree here: Freya, Poppy, Imogen, Niamh and Maisie.  And those rising fastest?  Isla, Summer and Ava.

For British boys, Jack is #1, as it has been for 14 years, followed by Oliver, Harry, Alfie and Charlie.  Royal names–such as George, William and James–continue to rule, and nickname names, in addition to Alfie and Charlie, are popular with this gender too, as in  Archie, Jamie, Freddie, Joe and Billy.  The boys’ names heard more there than here: Lewis, Harvey and Kian.  Theo was the fastest climber of the boys.

Scotland has released its official list, with Sophie, Emily, Olivia, Chloe and Emma, and Jack, Lewis, Daniel, Liam and James in the lead.  Some traditional Scottish favorites continued to hold their own, including Isla, Logan, Cameron, Gregor, Kyle, Finlay , Ewan and Angus.  To go somewhat farther afield, in New South Wales, the most populous part of Australia, the Top 5 for girls were Mia, Chloe, Isabella, Emily and Olivia; for boys it was  Jack (fifth year in a row), William, Lachlan, Joshua and Cooper, while  the starbaby influence was felt in the presence of names like Shiloh, Suri, Sunday, Honour (as it’s spelled there), and even Bronx.  In Japan, the top girls’ names were Aoi, Yui and Rin; for boys Hiroto, Ren and Yuto.

One US state that has weighed in early is Arizona, where the top names were Anthony and Isabella.  Several Hispanic names appeared on the boys’ list: Angel at #2, and Jose, Jesus and Luis in the Top 20.  The registrar of Oakland County, Michigan, which includes several Detroit suburbs, is obviously a name buff.  Among the groupings she noted in her area:  Harmony and Melody; Hope, Faith, Charity and Unity; London, Paris, Phoenix, Aspen, Georgia, Austin, Savannah and Brooklyn; Zinnia, Rose, Lily, Ivy and Violet, and a contingent of ancients: Julius, Marcus, Cassius, Leonidas, Athena and Adonis.

We’ll keep you posted  as more results come in.