Most Popular Baby Names 2017
In a stunning upset, the ancient boys’ name Atticus has jumped to the top of Nameberry’s baby name popularity list for 2017.
Atticus is the Number 1 name for boys among the Most Popular Baby Names of 2017, with Olivia the top girls’ name for the second year in a row.
While girls’ names conventionally move up and down the fashion ladder more quickly, this year’s Nameberry list is more volatile on the boys’ side, with more new entries in the count of Top 1000 names and more names making dramatic shifts up or down the ladder
That’s evidence of a sea change in how parents choose names for their sons, moving away from family names and traditional male choices and judging boys’ names the same way they do girls’, with style the driving factor.
Nameberry’s popular names list measures which names attract the largest share of our nearly 250 million page views, versus how many babies actually receive that name. It’s a gauge of parents’ interest in baby names and a predictor of which names will become more popular in the future.
Three new names vaulted onto the Top Ten this year for each gender: Cora, Maia, and Amara for girls, and Theodore, Jasper, and Henry for boys. Maia is the most surprising newcomer to the group, also new to the Nameberry Top 100 and on the US Top 1000 for only a decade.
Here is the complete Top Ten baby names for each gender.
2017 Top Ten Names for Girls
2017 Top Ten Names for Boys
*New in 2017
On Nameberry’s Top 100, new entrants besides Maia on the girls’ side are Rumi, the name of Beyonce and Jay-Z’s baby daughter, along with Brielle, Allegro, Celeste, Elena, and Alexandra.
There are more than twice as many new names on the boys’ Top 100. They are:
The girls’ names vaulting the most places up the list in 2017 are Evelyn, Amara, Naomi, Ada, and Phoebe, all up more than 20 places.
For boys, names that rose 20 or more places are Leo, Harvey, Kai, Liam, Arthur, Cassius, George, Finn, Ryker, Louis, Harry, and Jude.
Mythological names, those of ancient cultures, and from classic literature, influences that topped our baby name trend predictions for 2017, have proven to be most popular this year.
Atticus qualifies on two counts. It’s the name of a Roman literary figure as well as the first name of the hero of Harper Lee’s beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
Number 2 girls’ name Cora has mythological roots — it’s another name for Persephone, goddess of fertility and the underworld — and is also the first name of the heroine of the classic American novel Last of the Mohicans. Maia is the Greek mother of Hermes and the Roman goddess of spring. Rumi is the name of an ancient Muslim (male) poet and Phoebe is another name for the goddess of the moon and also figures in the New Testament, Shakespeare, and Catcher in the Rye.
On the boys’ side, Silas relates to the Roman god of trees, Augustus is the name of a Roman Emperor, and Magnus is a royal appellation meaning “greatest.” Caspian is a name from The Chronicles of Narnia and Dante was a medieval poet.
Other mythological and literary names on the rise include Ophelia, Freya, and Esme for girls; Cassius, Axel, and Felix for boys.
Here are the Top 100 Names for Girls in 2017:
And here are 2017’s Top 100 Names for Boys:
The 1000 Most Popular Baby Names 2017 for both genders is here.
Adorable first birthday crown pictured here available on Etsy from PennyAndGigi.