Top 10 Baby Names For 2013

Every year around mother's day my former place of employment announces the most popular baby names for the previous calendar year. They just announced the Top 10 Baby Names For 2013.

Rank	Boys	Girls
1	Noah	Sophia
2	Liam	Emma
3	Jacob	Olivia
4	Mason	Isabella
5	William	Ava
6	Ethan	Mia
7	Michael	Emily
8	Alexander	Abigail
9	Jayden	Madison
10	Daniel	Elizabeth

This presents a new number one name for boys. Previously it was Jacob every year since 1999.

You may know I was the one to start tabulating baby name lists based on nationwide data (source).

Since these lists were published in 1998, there has been more turnover in the top ten lists, which I'm happy to see. I don't like to see too many kids with the same name, especially if it is Michael. I've always disliked having a popular name. Michael was #1 every year from 1954 to 1998, except 1960. I'm happy to say it has fallen to number 7 now. Who would have thought that possible in 1998?

At this time of years reporters often seek me out and ask me for the sociological reasons for the rise in the new names. I really don't know and never claimed to be an authority on that. If Paco should be interested in the project, I'd be happy to refer such inquiries to him.

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I think I read an article a couple years back attributing the popularity of Jacob & Isabella as names over the past few years to the Twilight franchise. Based on this, it seems like Jacob has always been a popular name so it's probably not directly related.

But on the girl side, now that Twilight-fever is fading (over?), Isabella is dropping.

Quote: ams288

I think I read an article a couple years back attributing the popularity of Jacob & Isabella as names over the past few years to the Twilight franchise. Based on this, it seems like Jacob has always been a popular name so it's probably not directly related.

But on the girl side, now that Twilight-fever is fading (over?), Isabella is dropping.

I think Sophia will get steam from the Disney cartoon Sophia the First. I'm a little surprised that no Hunger Games names have seen a spike. Maybe because the names in those books are too esoteric and fictional.

Speaking of the Hunger Games, there is a park by my parent's house with an archery range. Throughout my childhood the mean number of archers at any given time was about 2. Lately it is suddenly about 20.

Ick.

My name is still in the mid-high 400's, I prefer it to be less popular, I think. Apparently, there are roughly 140 per million, and peaked in 2012 at 144/1,000,000, but there's a kid at my son's school with the name, and mathematically-speaking, that's extremely unlikely.

The year I was born, it was something like 40-60 per million, which I much prefer. It's getting dangerously close to not being a unique name.

I don't want to be too unique, though, so I like that it is an actual word and does not contain any friggin' punctuation marks.

Pretty interesting, mine is nearly out of the top 1000, and the SO was in the top 10 in the early 60's but now has been out of the top 1000 for 2 of the last 4 years. And I consider hers rather commonplace so might be a geographic slant to this.