Biblical to bizarre: American baby names run the gamut

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Planning on naming your baby Jacob or Emily? Be forewarned, those two names topped the US most popular list again last year -- Emily for the 11th year running.

The 2007 top baby names list released by the US Social Security Administration for Mother's Day on Sunday showed Americans consistent in their love for classical names: Michael, Ethan, Joshua and Daniel topped out the top five on the boys side, while Isabella, Emma, Ava and Madison were favorites for girls.

But the list showed that plenty were striving to be unique, creating wholly new names like Nevaeh -- "heaven" spelled backwards -- or sometimes just taking extreme orthographical liberty with better-known monikers.

"For reasons likely to puzzle baby name experts around the world,...

Premium Content Partnership | MyWire provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works. MyWire
 

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Please add your comment:

  1. You are currently: a Guest |
  2.  

Basic HTML tags that work in comments are: bold (<b></b>), italic (<i></i>), underline (<u></u>), and hyperlink (<a href></a)