Baby Names 2016: Nameberry Shares Top 50 Baby Names Already Proving Popular This Year

The Top 50 Baby Names Trending Right Now
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We're only into the second month of 2016 but a baby naming website is already beginning to see name trends forming.

Nameberry, the online baby name database, has been tracking visits to its individual name pages since the beginning of January.

The team then tracked which of the top names had their visits increased by 50% or more over the same period last year.

And voilà: they identified a group of 50 baby names the website states are the "hottest right now".

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"These names might not be showing up on international popularity lists quite yet," the people behind Nameberry wrote on the website.

"But the current spike in interest is sure to translate to much wider adoption in the months and years ahead."

Below is the list of 25 girls' names and 25 boys' names, each with a percentage of how much the visits have increased compared to this time last year.

Girls' names:

Astrid, up 101%

Thea, up 54%

Sadie, up 50%

Riley, up 335%

Elise, up 54%

Avery, up 52%

Rowan, up 115%

Elsie, up 68%

Finley, up 60%

Jade, up 96%

Anouk, up 122%

Wren, up 104%

Amara, up 52%

Celeste, up 51%

Aveline, up 57%

Teagan, up 134%

Bryn, up 317%

Peyton, up 71%

Sage, up 78%

Ruby, up 124%

Annalise, up 54%

Kaia, up 52%

Mavis, up 98%

Xanthe, up 83%

Everly, up 76%

Bryn, Riley and Teagan have had the highest increase in visits compared to last year.

Boys names:

James, up 72%

Elijah, up 50%

Jayden, up 489%

Elliot, up 80%

Logan, up 81%

Charlie, up 92%

Jude, up 137%

Elias, up 82%

Isaiah, up 60%

Arlo, up 51%

Kai, up 66%

Evan, up 95%

Aryan, up 70%

Aiden, up 102%

Noah, up 92%

Augustine, up 231%

Owen, up 54%

Alistair, up 63%

Amias, up 55%

Lewis, up 57%

Lucian, up 87%

Angus, up 78%

Micah, up 76%

Rhys, up 71%

Eamon, up 96%

Jayden, Augustine and Jude have had the highest increase in visits for boys compared to last year.

Nameberry came up with several trends from the top 50 names.

As you might have noticed, unisex names seem to be on the rise, with Riley, Rowan, Finley, Teagan, Sage and Everly all making the girls' list.

Names beginning with vowels were popular, with 40% of girls' names and more than half of the boys' names starting with either A (the most popular), E, I or O.

Some of the names also seem to have an "international flavour" as Nameberry described, including those inspired from Scandinavia (Astrid), French (Anouk), Africa (Amara) and Greek (Xanthe).

They also noted a similarity between the boys and girls names with "girl-boy pairs" making both lists, including Elise and Elias, Kai and Kaia, Jade and Jayden, and Evan and Everly.

They listed the 100 names with a short explanation of why they made the cut.

Some of the names were quite unusual: "Xanthe" and "Zephyr", while others were more recognisable such as "Saint", notably after Kim Kardashian used the name for her son in 2015.

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