THE MOST POPULAR BABY NAMES OF 2023!

BabyCenter.com has released its annual report on the top baby names of the year, and here are FIVE interesting takeaways:

1.  The most popular name for girls is, still, Olivia.  It was also #1 in 2022 and 2021 and has been in the Top 10 for 20 years.  Emma is #2 this year, and the rest of the Top 10 are Amelia, Sophia, Charlotte, Ava, Isabella, Mia, Luna, and Evelyn.

2.  The most popular name for boys is Noah.  That ends a four-year streak of Liam being #1.  Noah didn’t come out of nowhere, it’s been in the Top Five for a decade.  And Liam just dropped one notch to #2.  Oliver is #3 this year, and the rest of the Top 10 are Elijah, Mateo, Lucas, Levi, Leo, Ezra, and Luca.

3.  There’s a trend of names getting SHORTER, including nicknames.  For example, Ellie has overtaken Elizabeth and Eleanor, Josie is preferred over Josephine, and Theo and Leo are more common than the longer versions of Theodore and Leonardo.

4.  “Barbie” beat “Oppenheimer” at the box office AND in baby names, but both aren’t popular.  If you count Barbie’s full name, Barbara is up 994%, but that’s still just at #1,336.  Ken is down 846 spots, #2,612.

As for Oppenheimer, if you count “Robert,” that name is down 29 spots, to #178, and Katherine (Oppenheimer) is down 18 spots, to #471.

5.  The trend of boys' names ending in “en” seems to be fading.  That’s names like Jayden, Raiden, and Kayden.  Those names are all trending down, but are still in the Top 500.

But names ending in “ya” are rising for girls.  Ones like Siya, Haya, Inaya, Aadhya, and Ariyah.  All those names are in the Top 500, and trending up.

(You can find the Top 100 names for both boys and girls, here.)

(And you can find the “baby name trends” of 2023, here.)