How popular is the baby name Wilma 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 Wilma.
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According to Statistics Sweden, the most popular baby names in the country in 2019 were Alice and Lucas.
Here are Sweden’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2019:
Girl Names
Alice, 688 baby girls
Olivia, 645
Astrid, 628
Maja, 618
Vera, 607
Ebba, 590
Ella, 582
Wilma, 574
Alma, 562
Lilly, 561
Boy Names
Lucas, 768 baby boys
Liam, 760
William, 732
Elias, 729
Noah, 680
Hugo, 669
Oliver, 647
Oscar, 645
Adam, 620
Matteo, 596
In the girls’ top 10, Elsa was knocked off by Vera, which jumped all the way from 19th in 2018 to 5th in 2019.
In the boys’ top 10, Alexander was knocked off by Matteo, which experienced an even bigger jump: 27th to 10th.
So far I’m not sure what gave Vera and Matteo such big boosts, but no doubt it was pop culture — probably a Swedish TV show. That said, Swedish car manufacturer Volvo did introduce an autonomous, electric vehicle called Vera in 2018.
The names in Sweden’s top 100 that rose the fastest from 2018 to 2019 were Hedda and Frans. The names that dropped the fastest were Felicia (bye, Felicia!) and Viktor.
In 2018, the top two names in Sweden were Alice and William.
We know what the top names in the country were last year, but what about the top names in each state? Here’s the list, released just yesterday by the SSA. I’ve also included each state’s most popular unique names (i.e., names that only appeared in the data for that particular state).
What’s up with Wilma in Ohio? Nine baby girls is nearly a quarter (23%) of the total national usage. Interesting.
One of the other unique Utah boy names was Kaladin, which comes from a character in the Stormlight Archive book series by Utah-based fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson.
How about you — what are your thoughts/observations?
According to Statistics Sweden (SCB), the most popular baby names in the country in 2018 were Alice and William.
Here are Sweden’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2018:
Girl Names
Alice, 765 baby girls
Maja, 657
Lilly, 634
Ella, 604
Wilma, 600
Ebba, 597
Olivia, 581
Astrid, 565
Alma, 564
Elsa, 559
Boy Names
William, 863 baby boys
Liam, 834
Noah, 730
Lucas, 723
Oliver, 714
Oscar, 704
Elias, 697
Hugo, 683
Adam, 647
Alexander, 626
In the girls’ top 10, Maja, Alma and Elsa replace Saga (now 11th), Freja (12th), and Alicia (13th). One source mentioned that Saga’s decline corresponds with the conclusion of the popular Swedish TV show The Bridge (2011-2018), which featured a main character named Saga.
The boys’ top 10 includes the same 10 names, but in a different order.
The names in the top 100 that rose the fastest from 2017 to 2018 were Hailey and Lias (a short form of Elias). The names that dropped the fastest were Cornelia and Oscar. I also noticed that the ninth-fastest dropping girl name was Siri.
In 2017, the top two names in Sweden were the same.
“Everly” is hot…”Beverly” is not. It’s a one-letter difference between fashionable and fusty.
If you’re sensitive to style, you’ll prefer Everly. It fits with today’s trends far better than Beverly does.
But if you’re someone who isn’t concerned about style, or prefers to go against style, then you may not automatically go for Everly. In fact, you may be more attracted to Beverly because it’s the choice that most modern parents would avoid.
If you’ve ever thought about intentionally giving your baby a dated name (like Debbie, Grover, Marcia, or Vernon) for the sake of uniqueness within his/her peer group — if you have no problem sacrificing style for distinctiveness — then this list is for you.
Years ago, the concept of “contrarian” baby names came up in the comments of a post about Lois. Ever since then, creating a collection of uncool/contrarian baby names has been on my to-do list.
Finally, last month, I experimented with various formulas for pulling unstylish baby names out of the SSA dataset. Keeping the great-grandparent rule in mind, I aimed for names that would have been fashionable among the grandparents of today’s babies. The names below are the best results I got.
Interestingly, thirteen of the names above — Bobbie, Cary, Dale, Jackie, Jimmie, Jody, Kerry, Kim, Lynn, Robin, Sandy, Tracey, Tracy — managed to make both lists.
Now some questions for you…
Do you like any of these names? Would you be willing to use any of them on a modern-day baby? Why or why not?
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…