Popular baby names in Belgium, 2021

Flag of Belgium
Flag of Belgium

According to data from Statistics Belgium, the country’s most popular baby names last year were Olivia and Noah.

Here are Belgium’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2021:

Girl Names

  1. Olivia, 580 baby girls
  2. Emma, 500
  3. Louise, 455
  4. Mila, 435
  5. Alice, 416
  6. Camille, 403
  7. Lina, 394
  8. Sofia, 359
  9. Ella, 352
  10. Juliette, 346
  11. Nora, 342
  12. Mia, 325
  13. Marie, 317
  14. Lucie, 314
  15. Anna, 303
  16. Jade, 296
  17. Elena, 281
  18. Eva, 280
  19. Julia, 279
  20. Noor, 263
  21. Nina, 256
  22. Léa, 252
  23. Victoria, 249
  24. Chloé, 244
  25. Alix, 235
  26. Lou, 232
  27. Elise, 220
  28. Zoé, 215
  29. Giulia, 212
  30. Ellie, 210 (tie)
  31. Luna, 210 (tie)
  32. Liv, 209
  33. Renée, 207
  34. Amélie, 204
  35. Inaya, 202
  36. Rose, 194
  37. Charlotte, 191
  38. Jeanne, 188 (tie)
  39. Lily, 188 (tie)
  40. Lena, 187
  41. Sara, 176
  42. Manon, 171
  43. Julie, 170
  44. Mona, 160
  45. Alba, 159
  46. Livia, 155
  47. Billie, 154 (tie)
  48. Sophia, 154 (tie)
  49. Amira, 146
  50. Clara, 144 (tie)
  51. Stella, 144 (tie)

Boy Names

  1. Noah, 627 baby boys
  2. Arthur, 584
  3. Louis, 558
  4. Liam, 537
  5. Jules, 526
  6. Adam, 474
  7. Lucas, 426
  8. Gabriel, 422
  9. Victor, 416
  10. Oscar, 336
  11. Leon, 310
  12. Mathis, 294 (tie)
  13. Mohamed, 294 (tie)
  14. Finn, 289
  15. Léon, 275
  16. Matteo, 264
  17. Lewis, 251
  18. Hugo, 245
  19. Nathan, 238
  20. Luca, 234
  21. Elias, 225
  22. Raphaël, 223
  23. Théo, 221
  24. Amir, 217 (tie)
  25. Eden, 217 (tie)
  26. Rayan, 209
  27. Lou, 208
  28. Milo, 205
  29. Yanis, 204
  30. Achille, 201
  31. Otis, 194
  32. Sacha, 191 (tie)
  33. Vic, 191 (tie)
  34. Felix, 190
  35. Marcel, 187
  36. Basile, 185
  37. Aaron, 179
  38. Léo, 178
  39. Maurice, 174
  40. Alexander, 173
  41. Maël, 171
  42. Emiel, 168 (tie)
  43. Georges, 168 (tie)
  44. Jack, 167 (tie)
  45. William, 167 (tie)
  46. Emile, 163 (tie)
  47. Vince, 163 (tie)
  48. Samuel, 161
  49. Gaston, 159
  50. Oliver, 158

If Leon and Léon had been counted as a single name, their combined total (585) would have been enough to edge Arthur (584) out of second place on the boys’ list.

And the gender-neutral name Lou managed to pop up on both lists in nearly the same spot: 26th for girls, 27th for boys.

Map of the three regions of Belgium
Belgium’s three regions

The top baby names within each of Belgium’s three regions were…

Girl NamesBoy Names
Flanders
(57.6% of the population)
Language: Dutch		1. Olivia, 328
2. Ella, 303
3. Marie, 275
4. Mila, 266
5. Nora, 261		1. Noah, 399
2. Arthur, 321
3. Jules, 311
4. Leon, 288
5. Louis, 284
Wallonia
(31.8% of pop.)
Languages: French/German		1. Emma, 204
2. Olivia, 203
3. Louise, 190
4. Alice, 188 (tie)
5. Lucie, 188 (tie)		1. Gabriel, 266
2. Louis, 235
3. Liam, 233
4. Arthur, 208
5. Jules, 191
Brussels-Capital
(10.6% of pop.)
Languages: Dutch/French		1. Lina, 89
2. Sofia, 83
3. Emma, 60 (tie)
4. Nour, 60 (tie)
5. Olivia, 49		1. Mohamed, 118
2. Adam, 112
3. Gabriel, 82
4. Amir, 70
5. Noah, 62

And here’s a selection of names from the other end of the spectrum — names that were given to just 5 babies each in Belgium last year:

Rare Girl NamesRare Boy Names
Anabia, Believe, Caro, Dea, Elaïa, Fallone, Gaby, Heike, Iluna, Jennifer, Kessy, Lyssia, Mahsa, Nihal, Otice, Puck, Queen, Ramla, Siloé, Toos, Vlera, Wassila, Yseult, ZuriAloys, Brandon, Celle, Doruk, Erion, Fedde, Gustav, Hazar, Ilyass, Jip, Karsten, Lothar, Maksim, Nellis, Obi, Paulin, Qays, Riff, Silvio, Tille, Vidar, Wiebe, Yavuz, Zjef

(I’m a little surprised that as many as 5 baby girls in Belgium got the English word “believe” as their first name. I wonder if something specific was influencing that usage…?)

This time around, Belgium also highlighted the girl and boy names that saw the largest increases and decreases in usage over the last decade (2011-2021). The top 5 in each category were…

  • Girl names
    • Largest increases: Alba, Ellie, Ellis, Alya, Cilou
    • Largest decreases: Lisa, Laura, Julie, Lotte, Anaïs
  • Boy names
    • Largest increases: Georges, Lio, Gaston, Otis, Lyam
    • Largest decreases: Maxime, Thomas, Simon, Wout, Nathan

Finally, here’s a link to Belgium’s 2020 rankings, if you’d like to compare.

Sources: First names for boys and girls | STATBEL, Demographics of Belgium – Wikipedia

Image: Adapted from Flag of Belgium (public domain)
Map: Adapted from Regions of Belgium by Ssolbergj under CC BY 3.0.

What gave the baby name Vanna a boost in the 1980s?

Game show hostess Vanna White on "Wheel of Fortune" (January, 1986)
Vanna White on “Wheel of Fortune“

The baby name Vanna only saw a smattering of usage every year until the early 1980s, when it suddenly became trendy:

  • 1988: 58 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1987: 87 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1986: 111 baby girls named Vanna [peak]
  • 1985: 71 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1984: 39 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1983: 21 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1982: 7 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1981: 8 baby girls named Vanna
Graph of the usage of the baby name Vanna in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Vanna

The like-sounding names Savannah and Savanna also got a boost during that time period, and the spelling variant Vannah debuted the year Vanna hit peak usage.

What spurred all this interest in the name Vanna?

If you owned a TV set during the ’80s, you already know the answer: Vanna White, hostess of the popular game show Wheel of Fortune.

Vanna White was chosen out of a field of 200 hopefuls to join host Pat Sajak on the show in December of 1982. (The original hostess, Susan Stafford, quit in October.)

Her job essentially consisted of walking in front of a puzzle board — sometimes right to left, sometimes left to right — and turning tiles to reveal letters as contestants made their guesses. (Today she still walks back and forth, but the puzzle board letters are touch-activated.)

Wheel of Fortune became the highest-rated syndicated show on television in the mid-1980s. As a result, Vanna White became “TV’s most improbable cult heroine.” She became so popular, in fact, that the press dubbed the phenomenon Vanna-mania.

(Several years after peak Vanna-mania, one reporter noted that it “was one of the oddest phenomenons of our time, bestowing superstar status on a woman whose only obvious skill was turning letters on cue.”)

By early 1986, Vanna White knew she had multiple namesakes:

“I’ve gotten tons of fan mail,” she marvels. “Love letters, marriage proposals, children being named after me, which is quite an honor. Every year on Sept. 4, I get a picture of this adorable little Vanna.”

So, where did the original Vanna get her unusual first name?

[T]he name Vanna came from my grandmother’s next-door neighbor. Her name was Vana Woorell … and she spelled her name with one n … my mother liked the name so much, she said, Well, I’m gonna name my daughter Vanna with two n‘s.

What are your thoughts on the name Vanna? Would you use it?

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of Wheel of Fortune

The most-changed baby names in the U.S. (2017-2022)

The Washington Post recently published a pair of articles about babies whose names had been changed.

The first article mentioned that, according to SSA data, nearly 30,000 babies in the U.S. had had their names changed from January 2017 to March 2022.

The second article dug a little deeper, revealing the names that ranked highest on either side of the name-change spectrum: most-abandoned and most-adopted.

Most-abandoned baby namesMost-adopted baby names
1. Issac [sic]
2. Chole [sic]
3. Aiden
4. Conner
5. Elliot
6. Michael
7. James
8. Isabella
9. Sophia
10. David		1. Isaac
2. Chloe
3. Sebastian
4. William
5. Olivia
6. Michael
7. Elijah
8. Matthew
9. Connor
10. Jonathan

The top two names on both lists — Issac/Isaac and Chole/Chloe — clearly represent spelling corrections.

And my guess is that at least a portion of the boys named “Conner” had their names changed to the more common spelling “Connor.” (Connor has been a top-100 boy name since the early 1990s.)

My favorite thing about these rankings, though? The fact that Michael managed to balance itself out by ranking #6 on both lists. :)

(Thank you to Ellyn for letting me know about the WaPo articles!)

Sources:

The Jackson 5…and their five other siblings

Seven of the Jackson siblings: Jackie, Michael, Tito, Marlon, Randy, La Toya, Rebbie, and Janet (in 1976)
Seven of the Jackson siblings

We’ve all heard of the Jackson 5, but did you know that there were actually ten siblings in the Jackson family?

Katherine and Joe Jackson of Gary, Indiana, welcomed ten children — seven boys and three girls — over the course of 16 years. Here are the names of all ten, in order:

  1. Maureen Reillette, “Rebbie” (b. 1950)
  2. Sigmund Esco, “Jackie” (b. 1951)
  3. Tariano Adaryll, “Tito” (b. 1953)
  4. Jermaine LaJuane (b. 1954)
  5. La Toya Yvonne (b. 1956)
  6. Brandon (twin, b. 1957) — he died soon after birth
  7. Marlon David (twin, b. 1957)
  8. Michael Joe (b. 1958)
  9. Steven Randall, “Randy” (b. 1961)
  10. Janet Damita Jo (b. 1966)

Here are Jermaine’s thoughts on some of the Jackson family names, from his memoir:

I have often wondered how many names my parents went through before agreeing on the final nine. Not that it mattered in the end, because the choice of “Sigmund Esco” for their first son morphed into “Jackie” when Papa Samuel thought it easy to refer to him as “Jackson boy,” then laziness shortened it some more. And “Tariano Adaryl” [sic] became “Tito” because it was easier for us all. I was forever curious as a child about how two people’s taste could go from the exotic-sounding “Jermaine LaJuane” to “Michael Joe.” From somewhere, and especially after Michael’s death, a rumor began that his middle name was Joseph. Maybe this myth prefers the echo with our father’s name because the crossover reads better about a father and son who struggled to see eye to eye. “Joe” was his middle name, as recorded on his birth certificate. His first name was almost “Ronald,” at the suggestion of Mama Martha, but Mother quickly quashed that one.

(Papa Samuel was Jermaine’s paternal grandfather; Mama Martha was his maternal grandmother.)

Which Jackson sibling name do you like best?

Sources: