Naming Babies

Naming our girls was quite possibly the most fun and most difficult thing I’ve ever done. There seems to be sooooo much wrapped up in a name. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the name defines the person or the person defines the name, eventually the name, and the person wearing it, become synchronous.

One of our top priorities when choosing our girls’ names was that they were relatively unique (or not popular) while still being pronounceable.

Adelaide’s name easily fulfilled this goal. In 2009 (the year she was born), the name Adelaide was 567th on the Social Security Administration’s list of popular names (out of 1000 where number 1 is the most popular). It has been steadily growing in popularity year after year, but among her peers, it would be rare for her to meet another Adelaide.

The SSA just published their name list for 2011 so I was super excited to find out how Cadence ranked. Tadaa!

279th! Not bad! Still out of the top 200. I can live with that! And it’s declining in popularity, which is a bonus!

The girls’ middle names are another story—Sofia and Olivia, two names that have been in the top 10 for the last 10 years. But we knew what we were doing. If for some reason, the girls’ first names were too “out there” for them and they wanted something more mainstream, they have their middle names to fall back on. We love the names Sofia and Olivia and if they weren’t in the top 10 most popular names in the ~~universe~~ country then we would totally have picked them as first names. But we’re way too hip and indie for that. LOL!

Here is the list of most popular girl names last year:

Sophia
Isabella
Emma
Olivia
Ava
Emily
Abigail
Madison
Mia
Chloe

It’s pretty fun to see how names rank by year. Have you checked your name yet? Records go back to 1880! Heather was the 9th most popular name the year I was born (and in the top 10 for 3 years after that). That probably explains why I went to school with so many Heathers! Where does your name rank the year you were born?