Fresh Take: Sophie Kihm of Nameberry on the Baby Names We'll Be Seeing in 2026

0:28We always recommend Shopify. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Amy. Today, I'm talking to Sophie Keen. She is the Editor-in-Chief and Lead Name Consultant at Nameberry, the world's largest website devoted to names and identity. And today, we're going to be talking about the trends in baby names that Nameberry is seeing and predicting for 2026, and why naming your kid seems more complicated than ever. Welcome, Sophie. Thank you so much for having me. So first, tell us, how does Nameberry sort of aggregate and measure trends in baby names?

1:11This is what we prepare for all year long. Our Super Bowl, basically, is predicting the top baby name trends of the year ahead, which we typically do in the fall as we're going into the new year. And so we look at a bunch of different factors to determine these trends. The first is the national data that the Social Security Administration uses, but we only have data from the year before, right? So today in 2025, we have the 2024 data, but that's not really telling us, okay, how are things changing? Just to pause, it seems like that's been saying Sophie and Emma for girls and Liam and Noah for boys for a couple of years now.

1:52Yeah. At the very top of the charts, there's not a lot shifting. And so when we're thinking of trends, we're examining what are the names that are most likely to rise really fast and become a lot more popular. We can say with near certainty that Liam's probably going to be the number one boy named in 2025. Olivia is probably going to be the number one girl name. But that's a lot less interesting than saying, okay, these are the names that are getting popular under the surface, rising really quickly. And for that, we often go to our name vary statistics. I mean, we keep track of the names that people are looking at.

2:33And so we have that real time data that we publish on the site. Oh, I see. Yeah. This is what the parents to be, right? The people who are looking at baby names right now who are maybe having babies in 2026, this is what they're interested in. And tell us a little bit about Nameberry. I mean, I've used it in the past. I went back and looked at it more getting ready for this episode, the way that it's very rich, the data and the way that everything interconnects. So explain that so people can understand how this data is being created? Yeah. So we keep track of the names that people are searching for.

3:10So how many page views a name gets, but also the names that people are loving, right? You have the ability to create your own lists on Nameberry, to heart names, save your favorites. And so all of this stuff is wonderful information because some of the names that are on top of the charts that are being looked at have maybe a pop culture reference or an unusual name in the news. But then there are the names that people are like, oh, I want this on my list. This is maybe going on the short list for my child. That's giving us really rich information about what parents are interested in this very second.

3:47It's like the name that you didn't know you liked until you saw it. And you're like, oh, I do like that one. And then all of a sudden, Melania is getting a lot of likes. I got it. Okay, that makes sense. So you're saying for these 2026 baby name trends, which you're going to walkthrough because they're very interesting. You're saying that these are name berries predictions of what you think a year from now, you will have seen rocket from number 800 to number 150 or something like that. Absolutely. Yes. The names that parents are going to be using so much more frequently in the year to come. Okay.

4:22So let's talk through the top 10 baby name trends that Nameberry is seeing for 2026. The first one, ancient civilizations. Tell us about this one. Yeah, this is, I think, going to be a pretty widespread trend this year because it connects to so many different cultures, right? If we think about all the different ancient civilizations that are out there, people can find one that resonates with them. So we're seeing a lot of parents really reach back into far history for names that connect to their heritage, right? So we're seeing a real revival of names from Mesoamerican civilizations. So Nahuatl names, Aztec names, very popular among Latin Americans.

5:08We also have names from other ancient civilizations. So ancient Greek, ancient Rome, right? That parents are maybe using to connect their child back to this sense of history and something greater, right? The world feels pretty uncertain at the moment for a lot of people. And so parents are hoping, okay, if they give their child a really grand name, and I'm thinking names like Cassander or Ramses, Olympia, right? That maybe their child will help make this world a better place. The wisdom that I heard growing up is you needed to give a baby a name that they could be president with. And these are those names.

5:53Yeah, these names, Cressida Wilson would certainly fit into this category that these are solid names. And to me, I was hearing these more, I was like, these are Game of Thrones names. But as you said, these are all sorts of civilizations, all sorts of different kinds of people. I knew a long time ago, a baby whose name was Scipio. It sounds like a nickname, but it was spelled S-C-I-P-I-O, and it was the name of a Roman general. Yeah, now that you spell it. Now that I spell it, but it was one of those names that you had to explain. His mom would have to say it's Scipio. That's S-C-I-P-I-O. It's a Roman general.

6:32You need full context every time you heard the baby's name. So I think if parents, you know, have a personal connection with their heritage, right, this includes ancient Asian names, Indian cultures, Persian, it adds this layer of meaning for a lot of people that just makes the name. It's such a different time to then my mother named me Amy. And it was because she, you know, she's named her dolls, Amy, but also Amy when I was born, right, like in the early 70s was the number one girl's name. And boy, do I know it. If I'm in a group of 10 women around about my age, there's at least two Amys in the group.

7:10And my spouse is named David. And again, there were like five names for boys, right? David, Bobby, Billy, whatever, William. And now you can name your kid Johari or, you know, T-Knock if you want to. And I feel like that might be why it does feel like a big decision. It is an important decision. But like the fact that the world is so wide, I'm sure it can feel a little bit overwhelming for a parent today. Well, right. And now there's so much choice because back when you were born, right, your parents had access to a dictionary style book of names. If they were even searching for something, maybe they heard Amy on the neighbor and were like, that's really cute.

7:47I might want to use that or, you know, I use it for my dolls, right? But now the way we think about baby names has totally changed. And nameberry is really the influence behind this. I mean, back in the late 80s, the founders of Nameberry, Pamela Redmond and Linda Rosenkrantz wrote the book that changed the way that baby names were thought of. I remember this book. It was called Beyond Jennifer and Jason. Right. Which now these days, right, that title itself feels so dated. Nobody's naming their babies Jennifer anymore. Wide open names. Yep. But it organized names by style, image, popularity, all the stuff that we take for granted today.

8:32And so now that parents have access to that, the pool of possible baby names has expanded. And there's also this allergy, it seems, to using a name that another child in the class might have. You know, maybe back in the day, having another girl or two named Amy, that wouldn't have bothered your parents, right? It was just that came with the territory. But these days, parents will go through great lengths to avoid that sort of thing. And as a result, the most popular names, the names at the top of the charts have become significantly less popular than the top names of generations prior. Oh, that's interesting.

9:12All right, I'm talking to Sophie Keem. She is the editor-in-chief at Nameberry. We're gonna be back with more baby name trends for 2026. Hey there, I'm Kendra Adachi and my show, The Lazy Genius Podcast, helps you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And you get to decide what matters. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to give you a new way to see. Episodes of The Lazy Genius Podcast are full of compassionate time management tips and permission slips to do what makes sense for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow and listen to the Lazy Genius podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

9:51Okay, I'm back with Sophie Keem from Nameberry. Now we're going to talk about the next trend. We're going from ancient civilizations from the sacred to the profane. What are the next big trend in baby names for 2026? Oh, these are showgirl names. And they are influenced by everybody's favorite pop star, Taylor Swift, but not necessarily in the way that you would expect. Not the name Taylor, in other words. Not Taylor. In fact, Taylor is falling in popularity. That is a mom name today. Nobody's really wanting to call their babies Taylor. So she released this new album, Life of a Showgirl. And there are some track titles like Ophelia, which will definitely see rise in popularity.

10:35But really, we're looking at the showgirl element itself, right? Parents are going to be inspired by real life showgirl names, fictional showgirl names, and names that sound like they could be showgirl names. So what I mean is we're seeing more interest in names like Marilyn, possibly inspired by Marilyn Monroe, a very famous historical showgirl. Tallulah, Nomi, Farrah, Vivian, right? These names that are connected to people, real and fictional, who have this kind of glamorous showgirl, slightly gritty though, energy. And we're also seeing these names that just, they're feminine, they're a little bit sparkly, but they're very, very strong.

11:24And I think that this is the ethos that Taylor Swift puts out into the world. And that really speaks to her album, The Life of a Showgirl. So parents want these names like Cecily, Chiara, Elodie, Salome, Serafina, right? They have that showgirl energy, but there's something else there that suggests this wealth of strength behind. Yeah. It's more than just glamorous. You are the creator of your own narrative of your life. Roxy is also on this list, like Roxy Hart from Chicago. That's a great name for a kid who is doing it for herself. I love it. It's great. I hope to meet more babies named Roxy.

12:12All right. Now we'll move on to soulful names, which again, like it meant one thing and now it's kind of turning to something else. So tell us about this. Definitely. So soulful names are all about subtlety. These are not your average biblical names, which we previously thought biblical names were evergreen, never going to go out of style. Actually, a lot of them are kind of dropping in popularity. These classics that we took for granted, like David and Joseph. Sarah, uh-huh. Not as popular as they used to be. And previously they had been relatively stable. But parents who want a more spiritual or religious connection in a baby name are now going for these really understated options.

12:57And these are even names like Olive and River, which are so subtly spiritual that they're completely embraced by similar parents who may not even realize, oh, this could have a more religious interpretation. These include word names like shepherd, vision, sundae, a lot of nature names, dove, cedar. These are all about symbols and allowing yourself as a parent and your child to interpret their relationship to spirituality however they want to or however you want to. Got it. These are really pretty, some of these names. I got Rio, which means river. Hadn't really thought about that. Vision, Shiloh, Jubilee.

13:46That's another thing. A lot of these names are inherently gender neutral. So you give them to a girl or a boy. They're very flexible. There's so much room for interpretation within all of these names. And is that a trend that you're seeing at Nameberry, that people are choosing names that are more gender neutral, like River? Yeah, for sure. I mean, this trend is really growing in popularity as the name pool has grown, because there are a lot more words being introduced into the lexicon as names. And these are inherently gender neutral. Same with a lot of last names as first names. So parents are really embracing these names for sons and daughters.

14:32We still see, you know, certain names will become more popular for one sex over the other. But a huge difference today versus generations past is that parents are not abandoning boy names once they're adopted by girls. They are willing to accept, okay, my son named Charlie might have a girl or two in his class with his name, and there's nothing wrong with that. So that's been the biggest shift that we've noticed. That used to be very one way, like Leslie was at one time a boy's name, became a girl's name, never a boy's name again, or even Kelly. Kelly was a male name that is now predominantly coded as a girl's name.

15:13Right. And it's still today is some of those names haven't really recovered from if they made the shift a long time ago, right before the current consciousness. But today, if there's a new name, or if a boy name gets adopted for girls, parents are okay with that. And we're even seeing some people move this in the opposite direction and take names that are predominantly feminine and are using them for sons. Love it. Okay, let's move on to the A-OK Boomer names. But before that, explain to us the 100-year rule. Yeah, so the 100-year rule, this is another nameberry coinage that now just seems to be everywhere in the baby name world.

15:56But names, their popularity cycles are about 100 years long. And this is going to sound very morbid. But basically, the current population of people with a particular name has to die before we can consider the name as possibly being fresh for the current generation. It's so out, it's in, right? It's so old, it's new. Right. And so what we think of as, quote unquote, old man, old lady names today that are really in style. So Eleanor, Theodore, Henry. Henry's more of a true classic. I know a teenager named Anastasia. And that when my grandmother, my grandmother born in 1908, her very dear friend was Anastasia.

16:49And I had not heard it again until my friend named her daughter that 100 years later. So I see what you're doing here. Yeah, we just can't really know anyone who's living with the name anymore, because then we associate it with that generation. I mean, no one really sets out to name their child and think I want a name that is synonymous with the current generation of grandmothers or mothers. It just isn't in sync with the times. So it takes about 100 years for these names to come back. And a lot of them really do come back right on that cycle. I mean, another Taylor Swift connected one that we're seeing a lot lately is Marjorie.

17:29Her grandmother was named Marjorie. She has a song named Marjorie. And now Marjorie has rapidly risen through the ranks. And yes, that's due to Taylor Swift, but also because a lot of millennial women had grandmothers named Marjorie. And the name feels ready for a comeback. Grandmothers and great grandmothers. And right. Then when you have a baby, it's what a beautiful name, a name that nobody has. Yes. Right. It feels like an adorable and original choice. Then all of a sudden it's back. So these are names. This was fascinating because I think of names like Anastasia or Horace or Stanley in this.

18:07That would be my idea of what these old fashioned names were. Yes. Now these names, I'm seeing names on this list like Bonnie and Nancy, which is my mother's name. So she would be delighted to hear that her name is coming back. Richie and Ronald, the names of my parents, the boomers, are now becoming super hit baby names. Well, yes. And so that's the thing with these A-OK boomer names is that they're actually coming back ahead of schedule. These people are still with us, right? We all know someone named Diane or Ralph, maybe, you know, Wayne. And they don't quite feel fresh enough yet. But that's what's making them really cool among a certain subset of parents.

18:52These back in the day would have been called hipster baby names back when hipsters were in the zeitgeist. And so they're not going to be, you know, Dinah, Gloria. It's not the next Eleanor yet. But the really hip parents who are ahead of the curve, wanting something fresh, are going to do so much to revive these names. And already I've seen influencers have babies with names like Patty and Bruce and Joni. These names, they are here. So I know that people are going to be like, I don't think anyone would ever, you know, name their baby Darla. But it is happening 100%. You heard it here first. The boomer names are back.

19:39Okay, we're talking to Sophie King from Nameberry. We'll be right back. Okay, next on the list of most popular trends and baby names for 2026, Nameberry's calling it. I really wish my co-host Margaret was here for this one because next on the list is romanticcy names. So tell us about those. Yes, I mean, we've all witnessed the rise of the romanticy genre. This is mostly with books, but also TV shows. I feel like this is Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon adjacent here. Names from romanticy novels are rising, but also names that just fit that formula. So romanticy authors, like romance authors and fantasy authors follow a pretty strict formula and they borrow a little bit from each of those parent genres, romance and fantasy.

20:35So romance novel characters tend to be very gendered, very fanciful, long, often Latin-ed. But instead of going for names with Latin roots, they're influenced by the origins of fantasy names, which tend to be either Welsh or Norse. So blending these, creating elaborate, fanciful names with these kind of Welsh and Norse elements, you're getting names like Evander and Sabine, Tamsin, Bronwyn, Cordelia, Elspeth, right? These sound very magical. And as far as I know, not all of these names have been featured in Romanticist series, but they definitely sound like they could be, right? Right. Like I'm looking here at Elowen.

21:22That could be something that you've made up. Elspeth, that's a CBS show right now. So I'm sure that's made that name more popular. Orion. I love this. I definitely didn't name my kids in a time where you could just go with something cool, you know, at least in my culture, right? That you couldn't just come up with a cool sound and other cultures. That's always been the case. And now that's sort of trickling into modern American society as well. Absolutely. Parents feel a lot more free to experiment and come up with their own combinations, different spellings. There's a lot more acceptance. I mean, and some of the names on this list are technically invented names.

22:01Lilivere is one that I've heard here and there lately. And it sounds like it's a name with authentic Welsh roots. And it's actually not. It's influenced by the popularity of lily names and names like Gwynevere that have come into style lately. Our next topic is vowel hiatus names. I'd never heard this term before, but I understood it once I read it. So tell us about vowel hiatus, what that means first. Yeah, the vowel hiatus is a linguistics term. And it basically is when you enunciate two distinct adjoining vowels. So it's kind of the opposite of a diphthong where you would combine the two vowels to make a single sound.

22:40With the vowel hiatus, you are pronouncing each vowel sound in there. So like no-ah. No-ah is an example because there's two vowel sounds next to each other and you pronounce both of them and there's no consonant. It's not no-bah, it's no-ah. Okay. Exactly. And so what we've seen a lot recently in previous years was the rise of these liquid consonants. So like L and M, these enhance the glide of vowels. And it contributed to names like Bellamy and Milo and Milani really rising up the charts. But now parents are foregoing consonants altogether, almost. And using names that have maybe one or two consonants in them, but really are relying on the vowels for the meat of the sounds here.

23:26So these are names like Anaya, Gael, Lyal, Noah, specifically for girls is becoming more popular, Ria, Solea, Tadeo. These names are very vowel heavy, and they exist in cultures all around the world. And so this is actually a global trend. I wouldn't even say this is an American trend. We are seeing this happen worldwide. And you use here, there's a list of some celebrities that are doing this recently, and these are different cultures. So Milo Ventimiglia's daughter's name is Keala, I think you would pronounce that, which looks like it's a Hawaiian name that has that glottal stop in it. And then there's a Japanese name, Kazuo, a Latin American name, Eloisa, that these are cross cultures.

24:14What I love about this trend is that this is a true cross-cultural trend that we're seeing, whereas some of these trends that nameberry that we're highlighting are within a certain subset of the population that are maybe confined to a certain interest, right? People who don't read Romanticy are not really going to use Romanticy names, but these vowel hiatus names are being embraced across the board. So this is one of my favorites of our trend roundup this year. Okay. This next one is really super trendy, but I must admit, very cool. Number names. Yeah, number names. I mean, I was actually a little bit surprised by this one.

24:53But now that I've noticed it, I'm seeing it everywhere. So parents are using the names of actual numbers or names that suggest numbers in various ways. But one of the main reasons they are using these names is that it's a fresh way to suggest lineage. So overall, we're seeing fewer juniors, thirds, fourths, and so on in the population in the U.S. Certain cultures adhere to this more than others, but generally the numbers have gone down. Instead, they're much more open to the idea of giving their child a name like four. You know, maybe instead of naming their son James Anthony IV, they're just going to put four on the birth certificate.

25:41Or they're using these names to suggest the child's place within a family, right? You could use a name like Una or Primo for a firstborn child. Or if you're expecting your third baby, the fifth member of your family, and you have Latin American heritage, Cinco, I've seen even. They're having fun with this. It's a new type of honor name. And they are putting names like five, four, Quint, seven, Trace, Octavia on the birth certificate. Even names that maybe don't have that family connection or as much of a personal connection, number names are rising. So million and billion are on the charts. Wow.

26:29Which is a little bit surprising. And certainly the ones with pop culture connections, right? So 40, 11, 7 have been used in TV shows and things lately. Oh, right. Stranger Things, the girl was named 11. Right, right. Right. And so we're seeing boys and girls with the name 11. And this is also a celebrity trend. Kourtney Kardashian's son is named Rocky 13 because he was the 13th grandchild. Yeah, and 13 was his dad's favorite number. So we are seeing these a lot as middle names too, right? They make a very fun, unexpected middle when paired with a more conventional first name. But I think this one is just really unique and exciting.

27:12And it kind of reminds me of the soulful names in that some of these choices, like Ivy, for example, could be interpreted in many different ways. This is a nature name, but it also resembles the Roman numeral for four. Next up is Utah baby names, which you say were everybody outside of Utah was saying like, haha, look at these crazy names. And now they're starting to be imitated. Exactly. This is one of my favorite ones to talk about because people are really shocked by this. Utah baby names have been the subject of ridicule for years in baby name communities. There are these what are called tragedy forums, tragedy spelled T-R-A-G-E-D-E-I-G-H.

27:58They're all about poking fun at these types of names. And so Utah names have this really intense reputation. But in the zeitgeist lately, we've been watching Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. We are much more exposed to Utah moms and therefore Utah baby names. So now people are imitating these. And one thing I will say about Utah baby namers is that they are way ahead of the curve. Parents in Utah are pretty much the first to revive many vintage names. So these days, some of their favorites that are going to start to rise nationally are Dottie, Coco, Eldon, Fern.

28:48We're seeing a lot of that start to move out of Utah into the rest of the US. And they also are typically the first to adapt certain word names or place names and like Valley and Zealand. And they coin their own spellings and just create brand new names. And so some of the ones that are rising right now are Scotland and Swayze and Bodie spelled with two E's at the end. So, yeah, I mean, you can make fun of Utah baby names all you want, but they are coming for the rest of the population. Next up is anime names. I mean, this is a trend that I'm missing, but it is out there like K-pop demon hunters and movies and video games and everything.