Top Names of 2007

[Jennifer]

will be announced next week... any predictions?

[ckevans]

I'm not sure I'm going to make any predictions -- except that Miley might have a chance to make the list or rise on it, if this board follows the interest that seems to be shown in this name all over the Web.

What I will be fascinated to see is if the BNA list once again has Addison among the favorite names for BOYS, as it has had for several years. That has always seemed to me to be the most striking difference between the tastes of the members of BNA and the general public. Addison is now overwhelmingly a girls' name in the USA for newborns. :)

[Jennifer]

You will see Addison on the top 20 girls' names -- it has dropped to the 200s for boys.

[Jennifer]

Top names of 2007 are now up!

http://www.babynames.com/Names/Popular/

WDYT?

[snow]

Wow, Aaralyn? I'm shocked to see that one in the top 100 -- never even heard of it.

[KohlOwenPark]

Yeah Aaralyn Barra is a famous porn star but that is really the only well known figure /semi famous person I could find with the name. Doesn't seem like a figure that wld heat a name up out of obscurity, does it ? :shrug:

[Jennifer]

Yep, Aaralyn was added to over 1200 favorite name lists this year. It's also a name of a band and a Christian singer.

[KohlOwenPark]

I have heard of the band but not the christian singer, maybe that is the cause for increase ;) Much better reasoning then the hits I got on my search :lol:

[ckevans]

Very interesting! Aaralyn was the surprise for me, too. I'm also a little surprised Aurora made the list, even at #94. You can certainly tell from this list that participants in babynames.com don't include very many Hispanics or African-Americans, but that's not a surprise.

How many different spellings did you have to collate into "Cailyn" and "Caitlyn"? :)

Gavin and Holden seem a little "old hat" to me as I associate them with television stars or characters that have been around for years, but they do have that "two syllables ending in -n" structure that parents love these days.

[Elliebean]

for boys: Colton and Elijah surprised me (didnt expect Elijah to be so high on the list)

for girls: yeah Aaralyn is interesting and so is Cailyn although Im not surprised by it

[ckevans]

P.S. Having looked up the Christian singer's website, I find that Aaralyn is her stage name; her original name was Amanda. And she claims that Aaralyn means "with song" or "beautiful melody". I see that's the explanation on several websites, but that seems to be completely incorrect to me. Where on earth did they come up with that one? In what language could you possible get that "meaning" of Aaralyn from? :) I certainly think this site has it correct in saying it's probably simply someone's recent new creation to make a feminine form of Aaron.

[Jennifer]

CKE - good point. I may add "Baby's Heritage" as a field on the favorite name list form so we can pinpoint the background and create lists according to ethnicity.

As you can see, we took your advice from last year and made GENDER more prominent field in the form. I think that has made a difference in the accuracy of the lists (a la Addison).