By Linda Rosenkrantz
On Nameberry’s baby name popularity list for 2018, Atticus is the top boys’ name for the second year in a row and Olivia ranks as Number 1 for the third consecutive year. But the big news from the Most Popular Baby Names of 2018 is that three new names have attained a spot in the golden Top 10: Finn, Genevieve–which jumped up from #28 to #10–and Rose! Yes, that perennial middle name has now become a first name fave!
Parents have become more and more adventurous with their boy choices: in 2018 there were more boys’ names than girls’ entering the ranks of both the Top 100 and Top 1000 names. Nameberry boy favorites include fewer classics and traditional male picks, with style becoming a dominant factor.
For both genders we now see a preponderance of charming vintage revivals, with Clementine and Cordelia, Otto and Amos, all entering the Top 100. Unusual names made a strong showing as well, with high rankings for Amara, Aurora, Lyra and Wren, Atlas, Aarav, Ryker and Caspian.
Note: Four of the Top 10 girls’ names begin and end in the letter A.
Nameberry’s popular names list measures which names attracted the largest share of our nearly 250 million page views. It’s a measure of parents’ interest in baby names and a predictor of which names will become more popular in the future. While the latest national list measures 2017 popularity, Nameberry’s list gives a more current sense of what parents are considering NOW.
Here are the Top Ten baby names for each gender:
Top Ten Girl Names 2018
Top Ten Boy Names 2018
On Nameberry’s Top 100, new entrants on the girls’ side are:
On the boys’ side there are 11 new names in the Top 100. They are:
Big gains were also seen by Charlie, Louis and Emmett.
Number 1 boy name Atticus represents a growing trend towards ancient Latin names and literary heroes, Theodore is a second-tier classic making a strong comeback, while Silas is a name revived by Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake in 2015.
For girls, Charlotte reflects the influence of the British royal family; the popularity of multicultural Amara was probably spiked by her presence as an immortal character on The Vampire Diaries, while Genevieve is a fresher replacement for the Jen-generation of names.
Top 100 Girl Names 2018
Daisy
Top 100 Boy Names 2018
See the full list of Nameberry’s Most Popular Baby Names 2018.
Thanks to Owen Satran for his statistical research.
Linda Rosenkrantz
Linda Rosenkrantz is the co-founder of Nameberry, and co-author with Pamela Redmond of the ten baby naming books acknowledged to have revolutionized American baby naming. You can follow her personally at Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed New York Review Books Classics novel Talk and a number of other books.