Last year, the top baby names in Catalonia — an autonomous region in northeastern Spain — were Marc for boys and Julia for girls.
Here are Catalonia’s top 20 girl names and top 20 boy names of 2012:
| Baby Girl Names | Baby Boy Names |
|---|---|
| 1. Júlia/Julia (954 baby girls) 2. Martina (889) 3. Laia (833) 4. Carla (748) 5. Paula (697) 6. Maria/María (683) 7. Lucía (656) 8. Aina (591) 9. Noa (548) 10. Sara (529) 11. Clàudia/Claudia (528) 12. Emma (515) 13. Ariadna (452) 14. Alba (451) 15. Abril (380) 16. Arlet (369) 17. Daniela (355) 18. Jana (348) 19. Berta (338) 20. Ona (333) | 1. Marc (1,125 baby boys) 2. Àlex/Álex (753) 3. Èric/Eric (735) 4. Pol (696) 5. Pau (669) 6. Hugo (640) 7. Biel (636) 8. Arnau (621) 9. Gerard (600) 10. Jan (589) 11. Martí (577) 12. Nil (538) 13. Aleix (450) 14. David (441) 15. Oriol (431) 16. Daniel (425) 17. Adam (405) 18. Joel (379) 19. Adrià (373) 20. Iker (372) |
Iker, regularly a top-20 name in Catalonia, was rare in the U.S. just a decade ago. Today, usage of Iker is rising rapidly. It entered the top 1,000 in 2010 and already ranked 230th in 2012.
Who kicked off the Iker trend? Soccer player Iker Casillas Fernandez. (His younger brother also has an interesting name — Unai, a Basque word meaning “cowherd.”)