Baby Names 2025-2026: What's Rising, What's Fading, and Why

Picking a name is the first permanent decision you make as a parent. You can return the stroller, resell the crib, repaint the nursery. The name stays. And yet most of us choose it in a few weeks, scrolling through lists of 500 names on our phones at midnight between prenatal appointments.

What helps is understanding where the trends actually stand. Not to follow the crowd (nobody wants to be the fourth Liam at daycare), but to know what's common, what's oversaturated, and what's making a comeback after decades of being forgotten.

Here's the current state of things, based on the latest SSA data (released May 2025), ONS figures from England and Wales, and BabyCenter's tracking of 350,000+ births.

The current top 10: stable at the top, movement underneath

In the US, the SSA confirmed that Olivia held the #1 girls' spot for the sixth consecutive year, with Emma, Amelia, Charlotte, and Mia rounding out the top five. Liam did the same on the boys' side, followed by Noah, Oliver, Theodore, and James.

BabyCenter's 2025 data, which tracks names in near real-time, tells a slightly different story. Eliana and Aurora broke into the girls' top 10 for the first time, while Ava and Luna dropped out. For boys, Luca returned to the top 10, and Leo slipped to #11.

In the UK, Muhammad held the boys' #1 spot for the second consecutive year, followed by Noah and Oliver. Olivia led the girls' ranking, with Amelia and Lily behind her. The UK list has its own flavor: Florence, Poppy, Freya, and Archie are top-10 names there but barely register in the US.

Australia's list, for its part, has had Oliver at #1 for boys for twelve straight years. Charlotte leads the girls.

The big picture across all three countries: the very top is remarkably stable. The real changes happen between positions 10 and 100, where names rise and fall fast.

Names on the rise

This is where it gets interesting. Several names are climbing fast and could enter the top 10 within a year or two.

Girls:

Eliana is the clearest trajectory. It jumped from #34 to #18 on the SSA list in a single year and cracked BabyCenter's top 10. If the pace holds, it'll be a top-5 name by 2027.

Aurora entered BabyCenter's top 10 for the first time. The name has a fairy-tale quality (Disney's Sleeping Beauty doesn't hurt) without feeling childish. It works on a toddler and a 40-year-old lawyer equally well, which is exactly what parents look for.

Flora rose 223 spots in one year. Elodie and Elowen each jumped over 160 spots. Colette, Odette, and Josephine all entered Nameberry's top 100. The pattern is clear: French-inflected, vintage, elegant.

Boys:

Arthur returned to the US top 100 for the first time since 1970. It's been a top-5 name in the UK for years, and the transatlantic crossover is now happening.

Malachi and Ali both debuted in the US top 100. Conrad rose 40 spots (possibly a "The Summer I Turned Pretty" effect). Callum is one of Nameberry's fastest risers.

The most dramatic jump belongs to Jun, up 1,397 spots, driven by K-pop fandom (Seventeen's Jun). Jin rose 699 spots (BTS). These are still outside the mainstream, but they signal a new source of naming influence that barely existed five years ago.

Names losing ground

Every rise creates a fall somewhere else. Here's what's declining.

Luna dropped out of the US top 10 after years of rapid growth. It's the classic arc: a name rises fast, becomes ubiquitous, and parents start avoiding it precisely because it's everywhere. Luna went from rare to #1-adjacent in under a decade, and the correction is underway.

Ava also left the top 10. Like Emma before it, Ava spent so long near the top that it started to feel like the default choice rather than a deliberate one.

Blake fell 85 spots on the boys' side, one of the largest single-year drops. The timing coincides with the Blake Lively lawsuit coverage. Justin dropped 24 spots, likely for similar reasons (Justin Baldoni). Names are surprisingly sensitive to public perception of their most visible bearers.

More broadly, boy names ending in -y are declining across the board: Grady, Grey, Murphy, Vinny, Corey. So are names starting with D and K: Dominic, Dylan, Kylian. The sound palette is shifting toward softer consonants and open vowels.

And one more trend worth noting: creative spellings are dying. Charleigh, Alivia, Maddison, Emmitt, all falling. BabyCenter's data team declared "unique spellings are officially uncool." Parents are moving back to traditional forms. If you were considering Jaxon over Jackson, the cultural winds are blowing against you.

Four trends shaping the next few years

The cottagecore wave hit the birth certificate

Three nature-inspired names debuted in the US top 100 in 2025: Juniper, Sienna, and Eloise (from the French for "healthy," but associated with pastoral imagery). Flora rose 223 spots. Hazel, Violet, Daisy, Ivy, and Wren are all in or near the top 50 in at least one English-speaking country.

The trend extends beyond flowers: Rowan, Forrest, Heath, and Basil are gaining for boys. Parents seem drawn to names that evoke something organic and grounded, possibly as a counterweight to how much of childhood now happens on screens.

Old names are new again

Your great-grandparents were named Florence, Arthur, Josephine, Theodore, Elsie, Oscar. These names, unfashionable for fifty years, are back.

Theodore is #4 in the US and climbing. Florence is top 10 in the UK. Josephine entered the US top 100. Arthur came back after 53 years away. Elsie and Poppy are top 10 in England.

The mechanism is well-documented: names follow roughly 100-year cycles. The names popular in the 1920s sound fresh to parents in the 2020s because nobody in their immediate social circle has them. Your grandmother's name feels vintage and elegant. Your mother's name (Jennifer, Michelle, Karen) still feels too recent to recycle.

Short names keep winning

Look at the top 10 across all three countries: Mia, Ava, Ivy, Leo, Luca, Ezra, Levi. The trend toward short, punchy, easy-to-spell names has been building for a decade and shows no sign of reversing.

Emerging short names to watch for 2026: Gwen, Quinn, Kit, Indi. All under five letters, all easy to pronounce in multiple languages, all gaining traction.

The practical appeal is obvious: short names are harder to get wrong on Starbucks cups, work across cultures, and fit neatly on forms. But there's also an aesthetic shift at play. Parents seem to prefer names that feel clean and contained rather than elaborate and ornamental.

Pop culture still moves the needle

Beyonce's "Cowboy Carter" album pushed several names upward: Miley (+135 spots), Willie (+577), Jane (+127). K-pop is an increasingly powerful force, with Jun and Jin posting some of the biggest gains of the year.

The flip side is just as real. Names associated with public controversy drop measurably. The Blake and Justin declines mentioned earlier aren't coincidental. Parents are acutely aware that a name carries associations, and they'd rather avoid ones that come with baggage.

One interesting sub-trend: "joybait" names, chosen for their meaning rather than their sound. Truce rose 11,118 spots to crack the top 1,000 at #991. It's still a micro-trend, but the impulse behind it (naming a child after something hopeful during uncertain times) has shown up in every generation.

How to find the sweet spot

The classic trap: you love Olivia, but you know four babies named Olivia. You look for something different and end up with a name so unusual your kid will spend their life spelling it on the phone.

A few practical ways to find the middle ground.

Look at names ranked between 20 and 50. That's the sweet spot: familiar enough that nobody raises an eyebrow, rare enough that your child won't be one of three in their class. Right now, that means names like Eliana, Josephine, Sienna for girls, or Arthur, Callum, Malachi for boys.

Check the trajectory, not just the rank. A name at #30 but climbing fast will be at #10 in two years (and very common by the time your kid starts school). A name at #30 that's been stable for a decade will probably stay there.

Say the name out loud in real situations. "Josephine, dinner's ready." "Hi, I'm Callum." "Juniper, stop hitting your brother." If it sounds natural in all of those, it's a good sign.

What to expect in 2026-2027

The underlying trends (short names, vintage revival, soft sounds, nature influence) aren't going anywhere. They've been building for a decade and haven't peaked.

Girls to watch: Eliana, Aurora, Flora, Elodie, Josephine. All in strong upward trajectories.

Boys to watch: Arthur, Callum, Theodore (still rising despite already being #4), Malachi, Luca.

Names that will keep fading: Luna, Ava, creative spellings generally, boy names ending in -y.

And Olivia and Liam? They've held the top spot for six years each, which is historically long. At some point, saturation kicks in and parents start choosing alternatives. But "some point" could be next year or five years from now. Only the 2027 birth certificates will tell us.

In the meantime, if you're putting together a baby registry on LoveList, the name can wait. The registry, on the other hand, is better started early.