According to data released by Statistics Sweden on January 31st, the most popular baby names in Sweden in 2016 were Alice and Oscar.
Here are Sweden’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2016:
Girl Names
1. Alice, 910 baby girls
2. Lilly, 690
3. Maja, 664
4. Elsa, 643
5. Ella, 635
6. Alicia, 627
7. Olivia, 601
8. Julia, 597
9. Ebba, 596
10. Wilma, 587
Boy Names
1. Oscar, 879 baby boys
2. Lucas, 864
3. William, 850
4. Liam, 790
5. Oliver, 700
6. Hugo, 688
7. Alexander, 668
8. Elias, 664
9. Charlie, 650
10. Noah, 627
On the girls’ list, Alice replaced Elsa as the #1 name.
In the top 10, Alicia replaced Saga. Alicia’s rise from 21st in 2015 to 6th last year was inspired by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in early 2016 for her role in The Danish Girl (2015).
Overall, the girl name that saw the sharpest increase in usage was Chloe. The girl name that saw the sharpest drop in usage was Elsa.
On the boys’ side, Oscar replaced William as the #1 name.
In the top 10, Alexander and Noah replaced Axel and Vincent.
Overall, that boy name that saw the sharpest rise in usage was Nicolas (followed by Frans, boosted by Swedish singer-songwriter Frans, who represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest 2016). The boy name that saw the steepest decrease in usage was Anton.
It should be noted that Sweden does combine spelling variants to come up with national rankings, though I don’t know to what degree. The single example that Statistics Sweden offered was Vilma (159 baby girls) being counted with Wilma (421 baby girls). For that 10th-place total of 587, though, there would need to be at least one more variant in the mix. (I did notice “Whilma” in the database.)
Sources: Namnstatistik – Statistics Sweden, These were Sweden’s most popular baby names in 2016
Image: Adapted from Flag of Sweden (public domain)
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