At the end of not just a year but an entire decade, The New York Times asked Nameberry to name the names that defined the adolescence of the 21st century.
To find out, we analyzed the names that appear on the list of most popular baby names 2020 that did not rank among the Top 1000 a decade ago.
The result was more than 500 names that we organized into baby name trends that defined the decade of the 2010s. For the complete story, check out what we wrote in The New York Times, but we include here more names that exemplify the major trends exclusively for Nameberry readers.
The ultimate message: These are the names that became stylish over the past decade. Many of them might feel overheated by the end of the next.
Rediscovered Vintage Names
We dug another layer deeper to uncover new vintage names in the past decade. New old names in the Top 1000:
Vintage Girl Names
Clementine
Eloise
Florence
Louise
Mabel
Margot
Pearl
Thea
Vera
Willa
Vintage Boy Names
Benedict
Clyde
Harvey
Ira
Lionel
Lyle
Otis
Otto
Theo
Wallace
Contemporary God and Goddess Names
Mythological names — those from legend and ancient religions — have been one of the major trends of the past decade.
Goddess Names
Ariadne
Aurelia
Calliope
Freya
Galilea
Lilith
Maryam
Rhea
God Names
Achilles
Amos
Atlas
Augustine
Cain
Ephraim
Jaziel
Magnus
Marcellus
Titan
Unique Celebrity Names
Parents adopted the unusual celebrity names for their children. Some of the top names:
Adele
Axl
Blake
Benicio
Celine
Colson
Demi
Elan
Liv
Idris
Maisie
Keanu
Octavia
Kyrie
Saoirse
Legend
Stevie
Tatum
Sutton
Thiago
New Nature Names
Words names of all kinds but especially nature names rose to visibility in the 2010s, including these examples:
Azalea
Forest
Heavenly
Fox
Ivory
Genesis
Juniper
Major
Magnolia
Nova
Nova
Onyx
Sky
Ridge
Sunny
Rocky
Winter
Shepherd
Wren
Wilder
Unisex Names
New names seem to qualify as gender neutral all the time. These gender neutral names became popular over the past decade for both boys and girls.
Azariah
Briar
Emory
Leighton
Lennox
Milan
Nova
Oakley
Reign
Remy
Royal
Sutton
Diverse International Names
International names entered the US Top 1000 not just from Europe but from around the world. Newly popular in the 2010s are the following:
International Baby Girl Names
Alessia
Antonella
Astrid
Joelle
Julieta
Noor
Rivka
Sylvie
Veda
Vivienne
International Baby Boy Names
Torin
Anders
Arian
Bjorn
Bodhi
Cristiano
Kenzo
Khalid
Mustafa
Tadeo
Torin
Pamela Redmond
Pamela Redmond is the cocreator and CEO of Nameberry and Baby Name DNA. The coauthor of ten groundbreaking books on names, Redmond is an internationally-recognized baby name expert, quoted and published widely in such media outlets as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, CNN, and the BBC. She has written about baby names for The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and People.
Redmond is also a New York Times bestselling novelist whose books include Younger, the basis for the hit television show, and its sequel, Older. She has three new books in the works.