What's in a (baby) name?

Research has found that we look to the royal family, as well as celeb royalty, for our baby name inspo. But what were the most popular names of 2019 – and what’s to come in 2020?

Royal inspiration

Royal babies including George, Charlotte and Louis, and most recently baby Archie, have emerged as the top inspiration for baby names on Google. The search term ‘Royal baby name’ generates an average of 114,646 searches a month, according to research by data provider SEMrush.

Not to be outdone, two tiny members of the Kardashian clan have been revealed as the most popular celebrity babies in Google searches. Stormi, daughter of Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott, comes top, with the term ‘Stormi Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott’ being typed into the search engine 5,475 times a month.

Chicago, daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, is next, scoring 5,171 searches on average. Cheryl Cole and Liam Payne’s son Bear followed, generating 1,822 Google searches a month.

Top for 2019...

And a list of the top baby names for 2019 has borne this out, with George coming in second for boys and Archie 11th. As for girls, Mia and Grace (the Queen’s grandchild, Zara Tindall, has a daughter called Mia Grace) come 8th and 7th, and Charlotte 19th. The top ten boys names for 2019 were in full:

  1. 1. Oliver
  2. 2. George
  3. 3. Harry
  4. 4. Noah
  5. 5. Jack
  6. 6. Charlie
  7. 7. Leo
  8. 8. Jacob
  9. 9. Freddie
  10. 10. Alfie

For girls, the top ten names of 2019 were:

1. Olivia
2. Amelia
3. Isla
4. Ava
5. Emily
6. Sophia
7. Grace
8. Mia
9. Poppy
10. Ella

What's coming in 2020?

Meanwhile, if you’re due next year and trying to think of a name, you could bear these in mind. According to Nameberry, set to be big in 2020 for girls are Adah, Reese, Mika, Paisley and Amina. As for boys, names beginning with A seem strong, with Austin, Alva and Acacius topping the list.