Popular Baby Names
The names you hear most often, what they mean, and how to think clearly about choosing one.
Popular names get a bad press among parents hunting for something distinctive, which is unfair to them. A name becomes common because a great many people independently found it attractive, and that is a reasonable signal. The names below have been in steady use for years or decades, and most have been in use for centuries.
What popularity genuinely gives you is friction-free: your child is rarely misspelled, never mispronounced, and never has to repeat their name twice on the phone. What it costs is distinctiveness, and the small recurring irritation of being one of three in a class.
Check the real numbers before you decide
Popularity is local and it moves. A name that is everywhere in one country can be almost unused in the next one over, and rankings shift year to year. Any list that claims to be "the top 10" is out of date the moment it is published.
If popularity matters to your decision, go to the source: most countries publish annual name statistics free of charge. In the United States that is the Social Security Administration; the UK, Australia, Canada and most of Europe publish equivalents. Five minutes with the actual data beats any article, including this one.
The classroom test
The useful question is not "is this name popular?" but "how would I feel if there were two of them in the class?" For some parents that is genuinely fine — the name is worth it. For others it is the one thing they wanted to avoid. Both answers are correct; what causes regret is not asking the question until afterwards.
A middle path that works well: a familiar first name with an uncommon middle name. Your child gets the ease of a name everyone can spell, and keeps something distinctive in reserve.
The names
Tap any name to add it to your list.
Girls
- Latin — Olive tree — coined by Shakespeare for Twelfth Night
- Germanic — Whole, universal
- Germanic — Work, industriousness
- Greek — Wisdom
- Hebrew, via Italian and Spanish — Pledged to God
- French — Free — the feminine of Charles
- Italian and Scandinavian — A short form of Maria
- Norman English — From the old name Aveline
- English — Harp player — originally an occupational surname
- Latin — Moon
- English — From the flower, a symbol of purity
- Latin — Grace, favour
Boys
- Irish — A short form of William
- Hebrew — Rest, comfort
- Norman French — Olive tree
- Hebrew, via Latin Jacobus — Supplanter
- Hebrew — My God is the Lord
- Germanic — Resolute protection
- Germanic — Home ruler
- Greek — Gift of God
- Latin — From Lucania, in southern Italy
- Hebrew — Son of the right hand
- English — A medieval pet form of John
- Latin — Lion
If several of these are on your list, they will be hard to separate by staring at them — familiar names tend to feel equally acceptable, which is precisely the problem. Head-to-head comparison is much better at surfacing a preference you already hold but cannot articulate.
Found a few you like? Take them to the games and let the voting do the narrowing — swipe through them one at a time, or put them straight into a bracket. Or browse the other name guides.