Top Baby Names Of 2015 Revealed! Did Your Bundle Of Joy Make The Top Ten?
The top baby names of 2015 have been revealed – at least by one source, anyway – and parents are drawing inspiration for their baby names from a variety of sources, including popular TV shows, royalty, and even Instagram filters (yes, Instagram filters!),
As USA Today reports, pregnancy and parenting website BabyCenter crunched the numbers and came up with some interesting figures regarding popular baby names of tots born so far in 2015. We should note that the names BabyCenter used came strictly from the 340,000 moms (and dads?) who registered their kids’ names on the website; government-sanctioned, official figures from the Social Security Administration will come out in May.
You’ll want to roll out the red carpet for this new baby names trend! Read all the Top Baby Names for 2015 by click… pic.twitter.com/1r9UdH9pWA
— BabyCenter (@BabyCenter) December 2, 2015
Without further ado, here are the top 10 baby names for boys and girls born in 2015:
Top Girls’ Names
- Sophia
- Emma
- Olivia
- Ava
- Mia
- Isabella
- Zoe
- Lily
- Emily
- Madison
Top Boys’ Names
- Jackson
- Aiden
- Liam
- Lucas
- Noah
- Mason
- Ethan
- Caden
- Logan
- Jacob
As you can see, there’s nothing really noteworthy or particularly unusual in the top 10 baby names for boys and girls, but baby-naming trends go deeper than just the top 10.
Other parents are drawing baby names from royalty – literally: the name “Royalty,” which can be applied to a boy or a girl, is up 90 percent from last year. Other royalty-inspired names have also seen big gains from last year: Duchess, Reign, and Sultan also saw big gains from 2014.
Popular TV shows have also played a role in popular baby names – as they have for some number of years now (check out this post on Disney Baby for 40 popular baby names inspired by TV over the years). Last year House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black were big sources for baby names (did anybody you know name their baby daughter Piper?).
This year, it seems like Empire is the reigning champion of supplying popular baby names, including Dre, Lyon, and Hakeem.
So thankful to be up for Favorite Network Drama! Cast your vote for the Lyons here: https://t.co/RELIBHuiET #Empire pic.twitter.com/WvApYZzwF5 — Empire (@EmpireFOX) November 26, 2015
And in a somewhat surprising development, in 2015 parents took to naming their kids after Instagram filters. Lux (also a soap, and the Latin word for “light”), Ludwig (a centuries-old German name (ever heard of Ludwig van Beethoven?)) and Amaro all rose in popularity for boys, while Valencia (also a city in Spain) and Juno (a Roman goddess as well as the name of the titular character in a 2007 movie) came in for girls.
A slew of amazing space discoveries in 2015 also played a role in popular baby names: Venus, Jupiter, and Sunny (for both boys and girls) all rose in popularity this year.
Baby names have fluctuated in popularity in the United States for as long as the federal government has been keeping track (since 1880, according to The Washington Post). Interestingly, the most popular names remained relatively constant until about 1965; from there, things started changing dramatically every few years.
What changed? Although popular culture has obviously played a role, another factor seems to be social pressure, according to a 2009 study published in Health Day. In essence, popular baby names become more and more popular simply because they’re popular, if that makes sense.
“Our results give support to the idea that individual naming choices are in a large part determined by the social environment that expecting parents experience… Parents in the United States are increasingly sensitive to the change in frequency of a name in recent time, such that names that are gaining in popularity are seen as more desirable than those that have fallen in popularity in the recent pas. This bias then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: names that are falling continue to fall while names on the rise reach new heights of popularity, in turn influencing a new generation of parents.”
What’s your take on the top baby names of 2015? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
[Image via Shutterstock/fufu10]
