The website also released its “Top 100 Baby Names of 2013” based on parents who use its site, and while Ohio parents aligned pretty closely with other parents around the country in choosing names for their newborn daughters, they diverged considerably in choosing names for their sons, according to Ohio Department of Health data and the parenting website.
BabyCenter.com — which is affiliated with Johnson & Johnson and bills itself as the “number one pregnancy and parenting digital destination worldwide” — suggested that the latest list of the year’s most popular names reflects a new generation of parents striving for meaning in the names they choose.
“We saw a marked change this year,” Linda Murray, global editor in chief of BabyCenter.com, said in a news release. Parents “want a name that feels important to them. Looking back into your own family tree is a way to find a person meaningful to you. We see the search for meaning in this generation really starting to show up in the baby-naming ranks.”
BabyCenter listed names of 555,000 babies born in 2013 to moms registered on its site and found that Jackson had seized the top spot from Aiden, which had been the leading boy’s name for the past eight years. In Ohio, however, Liam was the top name for boys through Nov. 1 in Ohio, followed by Mason, William, Noah and Jacob. Jackson was sixth in popularity, and Aiden was 17th.
Among girls, Sophia was first for the fourth year in a row among BabyCenter.com’s users, followed by Emma, Olivia, Isabella and Mia. In Ohio, the top girls’ names so far in 2013 are Sophia, Emma, Ava, Olivia and Isabella.
New names in the BabyCenter.com “Top 100” were Caden, Jayce and Muhammad for boys; and Lila, Adalyn, Alaina, Liliana and Keira for girls.
In the survey of mothers about the naming process, the San Francisco-based website found that:
• 81 percent prefer classic names, and 43 percent said they like very unusual or unique names.
• 80 percent finalized their name decision before the birth.
• 63 percent dislike the baby-naming trend of celebrity-inspired names.
• 54 percent say people they know are the inspiration for names, with “My grandparents or my partner’s grandparents” leading the list at 39 percent.
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