Why do baby names dominate the charts every year?
This week, the U.S. Social Security Administration released its ranking of America’s most popular baby names for 2023. And for the fifth year in a row, Liam and Olivia secured the top spot, followed by Noah and Emma. Elevated to 2nd place. But what is it that parents don’t like about these names?
Adam Cooper, a linguist and professor at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, says it may be because these names are falling off our tongues. In particular, these popular names tend to avoid “hard stops.”
“It was very interesting to see how pronounced the pattern was,” Cooper said in a statement. “Names like Patrick, Peter, and Greg are more ‘stopping’ names, so to speak. These stop sounds aren’t actually included in the list here. […] There is more flow to the sounds and sound combinations that make up these popular names. ”
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However, avoiding “hard stops” is not the only thing that many of these popular names have in common. Mr. Cooper highlighted an area of linguistic research called phonetic aesthetics that examines the perception of the beauty and elegance of the sounds of particular words in different languages.
“What has been studied about English speech audiology, connects almost all the names [on the list] It would be “pseudo-comfortable,” Cooper said.
Of course, sound is not the only thing parents consider when choosing a name for their child. Some people use family names, while others focus on influential people, celebrities, or characters from their favorite TV shows. For example, the Social Security Administration found that the names of two popular TikTok stars, Kaeli and Eiden, increased significantly in the last year.
Native language may also play a role. For example, Cooper said the name “Mateo,” which appeared in the top 10 names for the first time this year, may be due to the growth in the U.S. Hispanic population.
“Mateo is also more aesthetically pleasing because it has multiple syllables and vowel changes, while Matthew has only two syllables,” Cooper said. “It’s not only an acknowledgment of the language it’s named after and its place in American society and culture, but also a connection to the sound pattern itself, which feels somewhat rhythmic.”
For baby girls, most of the names on the list end in A, which can be traced back to Latin inflections, Cooper said. “I think the Latin graphic system has influenced in some ways what we perceive to be more ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ name types,” he says.
“There’s nothing about the final vowel that inherently makes it feminine or not, just how it was used in this early grammatical system and how the language How did it develop into various Romance languages and how they are related?
To see if your name is on the list, check out our 2023 Top 10 Baby Boy Names list.
- liam
- Noah
- Oliver
- james
- Elijah
- Mateo
- theodore
- henry
- lucas
- william
And for girls:
- olivia
- emma
- charlotte
- amelia
- Sofia
- mia
- isabella
- Ava
- Evelyn
- Luna
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom, finding common ground and finding connections.
