Baby Name News of the Week
It’s been another week of new discoveries about favorite American names in 2016.
The big news was the release of the top names in every state. If you’re based in the US and concerned about the popularity of a name, you may want to know how it ranks in your state as well as nationally, because there can be big local differences.
Even the number one names in each state vary a lot – there are 8 different top-spot names for girls across the country, and 11 for boys.
If you want to know how a specific name has ranked over time, try this clever tool from Time magazine. Type in (almost) any name, and you’ll get a moving map of its popularity in every state since 1910. Warning: it’s a bit addictive.
The most popular names in US territories were also released last week, and the top name for girls in Puerto Rico caught my eye: Valentina. It’s long been popular in places with a large Spanish-speaking population, but in the last few years it’s spread more widely. Now Valentina is just outside the national top 100, at number 106. Could she be a successor to Isabella?
If you like the sound of Valentina but not the popularity, Valentine is rare for both boys and girls. And if you’re not sure if it’s wearable, this interview with the mother of a boy called Valentine might make you see the name differently.
Looking for more rarely-used names? To save you the trouble of scanning through the data, here are some more of the best undiscovered boys’ names – they were all used less than 100 times last year.
Celebrity name news: cool stories and popular picks
Have you ever been led astray by a birth announcement? I was this week, twice.
When I read that country musician Jess Carson’s son was born in a hospital parking lot, I wondered if his name, Parker, was a cool way to commemorate that. Wrong: it’s a family name, as is his middle name, Emmanuel. Still, it’s a happy coincidence. Was there ever a more apt name than Parker Carson?
And it does sometimes happen. This baby in South Dakota was named Lewis after the store parking lot where he was born last week.
Then I read that two ice hockey fans named their son after Pittsburgh Penguins player Phil Kessel. Phil, eh? Classic, but perhaps a little dated. Wrong again: the boy’s name is Kessel. This surname name (from the German word for “kettle”) is so rare it’s never charted in the US, but with that cool K initial it fits in with plenty of more popular boys’ names, like Kellan and Keegan.
A couple more celebrity babies remind us that not all stars choose outrageous names. Basketball player Russell Westbrook called his son Noah Russell: the top boys’ name paired with his own.
And reality TV star Maddie Brown Brush welcomed a son, Axel James. Axel has been popular with parents for some time, and it’s edging closer to the Top 100, ranking 116 in 2016. Some boys’ names containing an X, like Lennox and Hendrix, have exploded in popularity in the last 10 years. Axel has a similar feel to these, but it’s more of a steady modern favourite.
Name news from around the world
The hottest American names of the last ten years also include titles like King and Major – but did you know that you can’t use these in some countries?
In Australia, title names are not allowed in case they lead to confusion on paperwork. Recently, for example, parents in Canberra were refused when they tried to name their son PrinceofZion. Traditional royal names are big in Australia, though: the top boy and girl names in the Canberra area last year were Charlotte and William.
What do you do when you can’t decide between two names? One British mum put a poll on the Mumsnet forum, asking readers to choose between Keira and Annie for her daughter’s name. Sometimes when people ask the internet to choose their baby’s name, it can get out of hand (do you remember the dad who created namemydaughter.com to get the, er, finest suggestions the web had to offer?). But in this case, it all went very smoothly and, by popular vote, the girl’s name is Annie.
Finally, if you like names from unusual languages, here’s some news for you: the first book of Sorbian names (a Slavic language spoken in Germany) has been published. You can see all the names online, too. While some of them would be tricky to wear in the English-speaking world, there are some usable choices in there, like Kito, Merana and Sylka.