Henry, Olivia, Theo...oh my!
While the official top baby names of 2022 won't be determined by the Social Security Administration until the spring of 2023, baby naming expert Sherri Suzanne tells TODAY.com there are "names that have received consistent interest" throughout the year.
"Parents continue to ask about Olivia, Ava, Evelyn and Charlotte, all of which appeared in the top 10 of 2021," Suzanne says. "At the same time, they express genuine fondness for names like Hazel, Ivy and Sylvie, all of which were outside the top 10."
Suzanne saw a similar trend with boys.
"Top 10 names James, Henry and Theodore continued to generate strong interest, while Theo, Sebastian and Asher — still well outside the top 10 — were strongly on my clients’ minds," she says.
Baby naming trends in 2022
In 2022, Suzanne says that antique and traditional names co-existed with modern, more gender-neutral names.
"In today’s society, there is room for both," she tells TODAY.com.
While vintage names like Theodore and Amelia are firmly entrenched, and others like Silas and Alice continue to grow.
"The goal for many parents in 2022 was to dust off antiques that others haven’t discovered yet, like Louisa and Flora for girls and Ambrose and Harlan for boys," Suzanne says.
Some parents skipped formal names and went right to short forms and nicknames like Millie, Maisie and Archie.
"But I found this more among European and Australian clients than Americans," Suzanne says.
Suzanne tells TODAY.com, "Contemporary naming is filled with English surnames as first names. Surnames make good gender-neutral names, so we are seeing them for boys and girls."
Because of this, more names than ever before appear on both boy and girl popularity lists at the same time, such as Parker, Eden and Rowan.
Despite this, Suzanne says that "most" of her clients still request names that can be identified by gender.
"This is evidenced by the abundance of growing feminine-sounding names on the charts for girls, such as Alina, Delilah and Camila, as well as well as high-testosterone names for boys, such as Maverick, Wilder and Ace," she says.
Botanical and nature names are also in demand, though Suzanne says parents seem to be considering them more in the middle position.
"In some cases, they have moved well beyond Rose and Lily to include names like Juniper and Magnolia," she tells TODAY.com.
The baby naming expert says that for first names, familiar-but-underused names represent the most requested name category in her experience.
There was one trend that Suzanne did not see this year.
"For the first time, not a single client looked to incorporate a father’s name in the first or middle position," she says. "I think fathers nowadays have less of an expectation to produce a 'junior' since fewer are juniors themselves."
While it can be fun to discern trends around baby naming, Suzanne tells TODAY.com those trends can "turn around in an instant."
"It only takes one new pop culture reference to bring a name back," she says. "Bonnie, a name most popular back in 1950, received a sudden growth spurt in recent years, most likely from a popular TV character on 'The Vampire Diaries'."
