How popular is the baby name Nola in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Nola.
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According to France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), the most popular baby names in the country last year were (again) Emma and Gabriel.
Here are France’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2019:
Girl Names
Emma, 3,944 baby girls
Jade, 3,820
Louise, 3,752
Alice, 3,294
Lina, 2,948
Chloé, 2,862
Rose, 2,704
Léa, 2,689
Mila, 2,681
Ambre, 2,654
Boy Names
Gabriel, 4,987 baby boys
Léo, 4,653
Raphaël, 4,454
Arthur, 4,005
Louis, 3,947
Lucas, 3,737
Adam, 3,668
Jules, 3,542
Hugo, 3,493
Maël, 3,383
In the girls’ top 10, Ambre replaces Anna.
The boys’ top 10 includes the same 10 names, but in a different order.
Finally, names that saw notable increases in usage from 2018 to 2019 include:
Girl names: Joy, Arya, Octavia, Nola, Liyah, Chelsea
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a reader looking for lists of old-fashioned double names. She was aiming for names like Thelma Dean, Eula Mae, and Gaynell — names that would have sounded trendy in the early 1900s. She also mentioned that she’d started a list of her own.
So I began scouring the interwebs. I tracked down lists of old-fashioned names, and lists of double names…but I couldn’t find a decent list of double names that were also old-fashioned.
I loved the idea of such a list, though, so I suggested that we work together to create one. She generously sent me the pairings she’d collected so far, and I used several different records databases to find many more.
I restricted my search to names given to girls born in the U.S. from 1890 to 1930. I also stuck to double names that I found written as single names, because it’s very likely that these pairings were used together in real life (i.e., that they were true double names and not merely first-middle pairings).
Pairings that seemed too timeless, like Maria Mae and Julia Rose, were omitted. I also took out many of the pairings that feature now-trendy names — think Ella, Emma, and Lucy — because they just don’t sound old-fashioned anymore (though they would have a few decades ago).
The result isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a decent sampling of real-life, old-fashioned double names. I’ve organized them by second name, and I also added links to popularity graphs for names that were in the SSA data during the correct time period (early 1900s).
I spotted plenty of other combinations that just didn’t happen to be written as single names in the records, so here’s a handy dandy little table to cover some of the other existing combinations…
You’re playing a round of mini-golf with some friends. The group behind you includes a friendly lady who happens to be pregnant, and the two of you chat on-and-off between holes. Somewhere around hole 17 she mentions that she still can’t think of a name for the baby. Then she tells you the gist of what she’s looking for:
A two-syllable name for Nola’s sister. Can’t have the long “ee” sound in it or end in “s.”
“Do you have any suggestions?”
You’re a name-lover, and you could potentially give her dozens of suggestions on the spot. But your friends have already started teeing off on the last hole, so you only have time to give her five baby name suggestions before parting ways.
But here’s the fun part: Instead of blurting out the first five names you come up with (which is what you’d be forced to do in real life) you get to press a magical “pause” button, brainstorm for a bit, and then “unpause” the scenario to offer her the best five names you can think of.
Here are a few things to keep in mind as you brainstorm:
Be independent. Decide on your five names before looking at anyone else’s five names.
Be sincere. Would you honestly suggest these particular baby names out loud to a stranger in public?
Five names only! All names beyond the first five in your comment will be either deleted or replaced with nonsense words.
Finally, here’s the request again:
A two-syllable name for Nola’s sister. Can’t have the long “ee” sound in it or end in “s.”
Which five baby names are you going to suggest?
[To send in your own 2-sentence baby name request, here are the directions, and here’s the contact form.]
The Social Security Administration’s annual baby name list only includes names given to 5 or more U.S. baby girls (or baby boys) per year.
Most rare names never make the list, but a select group have appeared a single time. I like to call these the one-hit wonder baby names.
One-hit wonders tend to pop up with a relatively low number of babies — 5 or 6 — but a handful are given to dozens of babies…only to disappear again the next year! Intriguing, no?
Below are the highest-charting one-hit wonder names for every year on record before 2013. (We won’t know which 2013 names are one-hit wonders until later lists come out.) The format is: “Girl name(s), number of baby girls; Boy name(s), number of baby boys.”