Playground Analysis 2021

General Name Discussion
1

The latest Playground Analysis is here!

By combining all variant spellings of popular names, our guest blogger Kelli Brady reveals the names you’ll really hear most often on the playground.

Here are the new Top 20 names for girls and boys, together with their official rankings. To see the full Top 50, you’ll need to check out the blog post, linked above :wink:

Top Girl Names

  1. Sophia (5)
  2. Olivia (1)
  3. Amelia (4)
  4. Emma (2)
  5. Ava (5)
  6. Charlotte (3)
  7. Adeline (94)
  8. Isabella (7)
  9. Mia (8)
  10. Aria (22)
  11. Riley (37)
  12. Evelyn (9)
  13. Camila (12)
  14. Zoey (38)
  15. Layla (25)
  16. Madelyn (71)
  17. Isla (33)
  18. Elena (53)
  19. Eliana (48)
  20. Gianna (13)

Top Boy Names

  1. Liam (1)
  2. Jackson (14)
  3. Noah (2)
  4. Oliver (3)
  5. Aiden (26)
  6. Elijah (4)
  7. Lucas (8)
  8. Grayson (35)
  9. James (5)
  10. William (6)
  11. Benjamin (7)
  12. Mateo (15)
  13. Kayden (108)
  14. Henry (9)
  15. Luca (42)
  16. Michael (17)
  17. Alexander (13)
  18. Mason (18)
  19. Levi (12)
  20. Theodore (10)

Do these lists echo what you are hearing on the playground?

Have you ever changed the choice for your child’s name based on the Playground Analysis?

Let us know what you think of the new PA charts!

10 Likes
2

Wow, [name_f]Adeline[/name_f] really shot up once you consider all the spellings! I feel like I know so many little girls named [name_f]Addie[/name_f], I’m not surprised.

3 Likes
3

this is one of my favorite bits of data every year! i shared some with my coworkers at lunch (we work in a preschool so hear lots of names each year) and generally it seems that common names aren’t that common. we have a few doubles or alternate spellings (especially lucas/lukas/luke/luca) but generally kids have their own names! as a seasoned name nerd i see more patterns in clusters-- -aiden names are falling, longer vowel-heavy boy names are more common, lots of -leigh/-lee/-ley names for girls. i wish i could access rosters with first and middles without invading privacy!

2 Likes
4

Take out [name_f]Camila[/name_f], [name_u]Evelyn[/name_u], [name_f]Gianna[/name_f] and [name_m]Mateo[/name_m] and, yes, this is pretty accurate for my area! We are hearing of more kids with unusual names but they typically seem to be picked from the same old list.

We didn’t exactly change our son’s name based on a PA but it did play a factor. DH’s top choice was [name_u]Liam[/name_u]. I swear it feels like I could yell it out my front door and half the neighborhood boys would come running :joy: our top girl names (Ada and Isla) are both climbing up there. Well, [name_f]Isla[/name_f] is but [name_f]Ada[/name_f] would get lumped in with the Adalyns. It’s kind of making me want to look for other names. It’s not that I don’t want my child to have a popular name…hearing the same names over and over just makes them sour and tired to my ears.

2 Likes