This was originally posted on June 29, 2010
This guest post on popular names in the U.S. was fashioned for babynames.co.uk by Pamela Redmond Satran, cofounder of the baby names website nameberry.com and coauthor of ten books on names, including The Brilliant Book of Baby Names and Cool Names for Babies.
The most popular baby names in the U.S. for 2010 won’t be tallied by the Social Security Administration until next May, but over at Nameberry we have our fingers on the pulse of American baby-naming right now.
We looked at the names our visitors are searching on our site for the first half of 2010. For girls, Charlotte is the number 1 name, with Seraphina (younger daughter of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck) and Oliva following at 2 and 3. Henry leads the pack for boys, with Finn and Oliver in second and third place.
Girls’ names making the biggest leap up the list over the first quarter of 2010 are Harper, Jane, Quinn (influenced, no doubt, by the television hit show “Glee”), Clara, Clementine, and Ivy. For boys, the fastest riser is Sawyer.
The equals sign or up and down notations indicate which direction the names are moving compared with their position after the first quarter of the year. Asterisks indicate names new to the most popular list. Of course, the Nameberry list is vastly different than the official list of Most Popular Names in the U.S. The Social Security list is based on all actual births and name choices in the country, while the nameberry list measures which names our relatively style-conscious visitors are most curious about. Plus Nameberry searches come from all over the world — about a third of our visits originate outside the US — while the Social Security list tracks which names Americans actually give their children.
Here, the Top 100 girls’ and boys’ names for the first half of 2010.
GIRLS NAMES
1. CHARLOTTE =
2. SERAPHINA =
3. OLIVIA =
4. VIOLET up
5. ELIZABETH down
6. ISLA down
7. SOPHIA down
8. LAURA up
9. CAROLINE up
10. AVA =
11. ALICE down
12. IMOGEN up
13. LUCY down
14. AMELIA up
15. SCARLETT down
16. MAISIE down
17. GRACE down
18. CLAIRE down
19. LILY down
20. STELLA down
21. ADELAIDE up
22. HARPER up
23. ISABELLA up
24. ELLA down
25. EMMA up
26. ELIZA down
27. JANE up
28. CHLOE down
29. MAEVE down
30. QUINN up
31. AVERY down
32. EVANGELINE down
33. CLARA up
34. MATILDA down
35. RUBY down
36. CLEMENTINE up
37. AUDREY down
38. LILA down
39. ZOE down
40. SADIE down
41. LOLA down
42. IVY up*
43. PENELOPE up
44. ARABELLA down
45. ELOISE up
46. IRIS down
47. BEATRICE up
48. SARAH down
49. ANNA down
50. EVELYN down
BOYS NAMES
1. HENRY =
2. FINN =
3. OLIVER =
4. JAMES =
5. ASHER =
6. JACK =
7. MAX =
8. JASPER up
9. LIAM up
10. ATTICUS up
11. JUDE down
12. OWEN up
13. FELIX down
14. WILLIAM up
15. KAI up
16. MILO up
17. NOAH up
18. JOHN up
19. LEO up
20. SAWYER up
21. SEBASTIAN up
22. MICHAEL down
23. HUDSON up
24. SATCHEL up*
25. LEVI =
26. THEO up
27. ALEXANDER down
28. AUDEN up
29. BENJAMIN up
30. ROWAN up
31. AUGUST down
32. DASHIELL up
33. PHINEAS down
34. RYAN down
35. RHYS down
36. BECKETT up
37. MILES down
38. ELI down
39. ELLIOT down
40. RILEY down
41. LUCAS up
42. ETHAN up
43. SILAS down
44. ANDREW up
45. OSCAR up
46. JACOB up
47. LOGAN up
48. DAVID up
49. ISAAC up
50. MASON down
For an idea of which might be the UK’s most popular baby names 2010, check out our recent study.
