Baby Name Trends 2014 – A Century of the Best of British Names
Choosing your baby’s name is a huge challenge – if also one of the best – as you know it will affect perceptions of your little one his or her whole life. Jules is pretty chuffed not to have come across another Sacha yet, though that’s probably because it’s more of a girl’s name in the UK (in French, it’s exclusively male). So here at Amoralia we love keeping up with baby naming trends.
Although we’re only just over halfway through the year, a lot of UK baby name sites are already publishing lists of popular 2014 monikers based upon statistics from 2013 and from 2014. It’s also interesting to compare the provisional top ten with that from one hundred years ago… We’ve complied lists from 1914, 1994 and 2014 to compare them. Although some of today’s top names would be considered traditional compared to those widely used twenty years ago, they have a different tone to the more serious names which were being dished out in 1914, in the wake of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Popular names endure though some of the less elegant ones have fallen from grace. It seems clear to us that although there have been some changes, our taste in names is not so different to that of our not-so-distant ancestors.
Girls
Bearing in mind trends for 2014 may yet change, the list this year is already quite telling. Feminine names are considered the most desirable and we think it’s not surprising that parents are naming their little beauties from the wealth of options available. No longer tied by conventions and with a literal world of options available, people are naming their daughters with traditional yet artistic names. It’s all about the soft ‘a’ and ‘y’ suffixes this year.
Top Girl’s Names 2014 | Top Girl’s Names 1994 | Top Girl’s Names 1914 | |
1 | Amelia | Lauren | Mary |
2 | Olivia | Rebecca | Elizabeth |
3 | Lily | Jade | Margaret |
4 | Jessica | Charlotte | Doris |
5 | Emily | Hannah | Florence |
6 | Ava | Jessica | Annie |
7 | Mia | Amy | Dorothy |
8 | Isla | Sophie | Alice |
9 | Sophie | Emily | Edith |
10 | Isabella | Emma | Elsie |
Boys
Creativity can and should come into naming boys but here in the UK we do have a strong pool of universally popular names which have been favoured for over a century. Names such as James, Thomas and William feature in all three of our lists, testament to the fact they are considered timeless.
Top Boys Names 2014 | Top Boys Names 1994 | Top Boys Names 1914 | |
1 | Harry | James | William |
2 | Oliver | Thomas | John |
3 | Jack | Michael | George |
4 | Charlie | David | Thomas |
5 | Alfie | Daniel | James |
6 | Thomas | William | Arthur |
7 | James | Jack | Frederick |
8 | Jacob | Alexander | Charles |
9 | Joshua | Ryan | Albert |
10 | William | Andrew | Henry |
Today, parents have more choice than ever before when naming their babies. The internet is a vast resource with names (and their meanings) from almost any culture and language within easy reach. As there is less pressure to name children after family members (though this is still a nice thought!) mums and dads really can think outside the box if they choose to. With the ongoing celeb habit of choosing far-out names such as Bear, Blue, Cricket and North, our children can now have names that their great, great grandparents wouldn’t even have thought of as names!
How about Kent Canterbury for Jules’ next baby?!
Image source:
http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Once-loved-Danbury-school-being-demolished-1458504.php