How popular is the baby name Ashley in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Ashley.

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Popularity of the baby name Ashley


Posts that mention the name Ashley

Popular baby names in Johnston County (North Carolina), 2023 & 2022

Flag of North Carolina
Flag of North Carolina

In 2023, North Carolina’s Johnston County welcomed 1,931 babies — 950 girls and 981 boys.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Charlotte and Liam.

Here are Johnston County’s top 10+ girl names and top 10+ boy names of 2023:

Girl names, 2023

  1. Charlotte
  2. Olivia & Sophia (tie)
  3. Camila, Emma, Isabelle & Scarlett (4-way tie)
  4. Abigail & Amelia (tie)
  5. Delilah
  6. Ava, Eliana, Elizabeth, Layla, Luna & Willow (6-way tie)
  7. Chloe, Ellie, Emily, Harper, Hazel, Mia, Paisley, Sadie & Sofia (9-way tie)
  8. Eliza, Kinsley, Leah, Leilani & Presley (5-way tie)
  9. Evelyn, Genesis, Kailani, Lucy, Madison, Raelynn, Riley, Valentina & Victoria (9-way tie)
  10. Adalyn, Autumn, Isabel, Ivey, Jade, Josie, Kaylani, Lainey, Madeline, Madelyn, Milani, Nova, Penelope, Peyton, Samantha, Violet, Whitley & Zoe (18-way tie)

Boy names, 2023

  1. Liam
  2. Noah
  3. Sebastian
  4. William
  5. Asher & Levi (tie)
  6. Julian & Mateo
  7. Carter, Elijah, Grayson, Lucas, Waylon (5-way tie)
  8. Aiden & Chase (tie)
  9. Benjamin, Carson, Charles, Christopher, Hudson, Jackson, Joseph, Maverick, Oliver, Thomas & Wyatt (11-way tie)
  10. Alexander, Amir, Angel, Elias, Ezra, Gael, Ian, Josiah, Legend, Leonardo, Owen & Samuel (12-way tie)

The county’s 2022 rankings — topped by Charlotte and Noah — included total numbers of babies:

Girl names, 2022

  1. Charlotte, 12 baby girls
  2. Amelia & Scarlett, 11 each (tie)
  3. Ava, Harper & Sophia, 10 each (3-way tie)
  4. Camila & Isabella, 9 each (tie)
  5. Elizabeth, 8
  6. Emma, Olivia, & Paisley, 7 each (3-way tie)
  7. Abigail, Ella, Kinsley, Luna, Mia, Riley & Willow, 6 each (7-way tie)
  8. Angela, Brooklyn, Delilah, Ellie, Emily, Everly, Gianna, Hannah, Kailani, Layla, Leah, Madelyn & Savannah, 5 each (13-way tie)
  9. Addison, Andrea, Ashley, Aurora, Avery, Belen, Bella, Carsyn, Chloe, Eleanor, Julia, Lydia, Magnolia & Violet, 4 each (14-way tie)
  10. Ada, Alora, Alyssa, Aria, Callie, Carolina, Elena, Eliana, Eliza, Elliana, Emely, Evelyn, Genesis, Genevieve, Grace, Gracie, Khloe, Lillian, Lilly, Lily, Lucy, Madilyn, Madison, Naomi, Peyton, Presley, Ryleigh, Sara, Skylar, Sofia, Stephanie & Zara, 3 each (32-way tie)

Boy names, 2022

  1. Noah, 16 baby boys
  2. Liam, 12
  3. Mason, 11
  4. Oliver, 10
  5. William & Wyatt, 9 each (tie)
  6. Carter, Jayden & Sebastian, 8 (3-way tie)
  7. Elijah, Lucas, Mateo & Waylon, 7 each (4-way tie)
  8. Alexander, Angel, Asher, Christopher, Dylan, Elias, Ethan, Henry, Isaac, Lincoln & Nathan, 6 each (11-way tie)
  9. Amir, Eli, Jacob, Jameson, Jaxon, River, Ryan & Thomas, 5 each (8-way tie)
  10. Anthony, Chance, Charles, Hendrix, Hudson, Ivan, Jackson, Jordan, Julian, Leo, Levi, Logan, Luke, Matthew, Maverick & Ryder, 4 each (16-way tie)

If you’d like to go back even further, here are links to earlier sets of baby name rankings for Johnston County:

  • 2021 (top names: Olivia and Liam)
  • 2020 (top names: Olivia and Noah)
  • 2019 (top names: Emma and Liam)
  • 2018 (top names: Olivia and Elijah)
  • 2017 (top names: Ava and Liam)

Sources: Top Baby Names of 2023 – Johnston County Register of Deeds, Top 2023 Baby Names In Johnston County – JoCo Report, 2022 Top Johnston County Baby Names – JoCo Report

Image: Adapted from Flag of North Carolina (public domain)

Massachusetts quadruplets: Chesley, Chatham, Chance, Cheston

kinderfest

In July of 2022, quadruplets in the form of two sets of identical twins were born to Ashley Ness of Taunton, Massachusetts.

The two girls were named Chesley and Chatham, and the two boys were named Chance and Cheston.

Why did Ashley choose four names starting with “Ch”?

Family tradition. After Ashley’s sister gave her three children Ch-names, Ashley followed suit by naming her now 8-year-old daughter Chanel.

And then, when I found out I was having four, I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m not changing it now.’ It was very challenging, though, to find four names.

I wonder if Chatham’s name was inspired by the Cape Cod town of Chatham (pronounced CHAT-um). If so, she has something in common with Michael J. Fox’s daughter Aquinnah, who was named after the Martha’s Vineyard town of Aquinnah.

What are your thoughts on these names? Which one do you like best?

Source: Truesdell, Jeff. “Mom Ashley Ness Delivers Quadruplets Who Are 2 Sets of Identical Twins.” People 28 Jul. 2022. (found via Abby, thank you!)

What popularized the baby name Kayleigh in the 1980s?

The Marillion single "Kayleigh" (1985)
“Kayleigh” single

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Kayleigh became very popular all of a sudden in the mid-1980s:

  • 1987: 537 baby girls named Kayleigh [rank: 415th]
  • 1986: 748 baby girls named Kayleigh [rank: 321st]
  • 1985: 211 baby girls named Kayleigh [rank: 794th]
  • 1984: 7 baby girls named Kayleigh [debut]
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: unlisted

Kayleigh was the fastest-rising baby name of 1985, in fact.

Graph of the usage of the baby name Kayleigh in the U.S. since 1880.
Usage of the baby name Kayleigh

What made it so trendy?

The song “Kayleigh” (1985) by British rock band Marillion.

Several of the band’s singles had done well in the UK up to that point, but the rock ballad “Kayleigh” was their first (and, so far, only) song to reach the U.S. Hot 100, peaking at #74 in late October, 1985.

The lead singer of the band had written the song with several past girlfriends in mind, but the name of the song was inspired by one woman in particular. He explained:

I’d wanted to write a song about a girlfriend I’d split up with, whose name was Kay. Which of course we couldn’t do. So we added her middle name, Lee, and it became Kayleigh instead. […] But it wasn’t just about Kay, it was inspired by three or four different people in my life.

Interestingly, the entire Kaylee name-group was already on the rise before the song was released in mid-1985. For instance, the most popular spelling of the name, Kaylee — which ultimately peaked at 26th in 2009 — jumped well into the top 1,000 (824th) in 1984. The same year, the spelling Kaylie was the 25th-fastest rising girl name (relatively speaking), and girl-name debuts included Caylie, Caleigh, Cayley, Kailie, and Cailey — not to mention Kayleigh itself.

So the song didn’t exactly kick things off. No doubt it contributed to the name’s trendiness, though. It does seem to have given a discernible boost to the spellings Kaleigh, Kalee, Kalie, Kaeleigh, and Kaileigh. And it may have been behind the debut of Cayleigh in 1986.

So…why was the Kaylee name-group already picking up stream in 1984? I don’t know for certain, but I can point to a couple of possible contributing factors:

  • The trendiness of Kayla in the early ’80s, due largely to a soap opera character: Kayla Brady from Days of Our Lives.
  • The trendiness of Ashley in the early ’80s, due in part to another soap opera character: Ashley Abbott from The Young and the Restless.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Kayleigh? (Do you like this spelling, or do you prefer one of the other spellings?)

Sources:

P.S. Marillion’s 2nd-biggest song, “Lavender” (1985) — which was the track right after “Kayleigh” on the Misplaced Childhood album — may have given the baby name Lavender a nudge in the mid-’80s.

P.P.S. The band’s name, pronounced mar-IH-lee-un, was based on the title of the novel The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Name quotes #122: Fingal, Cecil, Madison

double quotation mark

Greetings everyone! Here’s this month’s quote post…

From a 2017 article about the off-Broadway play They Promised Her the Moon (which tells the story of pilot Geraldyn “Jerrie” Cobb, the first American woman to test for space flight):

“I immediately fell in love with the story,” the show’s director and producer, Valentina Fratti, told Space.com. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t know about Jerrie Cobb.” 

Fratti had been named for the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, but hadn’t known about the “almost first,” her American counterpart. 

From a 1907 article in the Deseret Evening News called “Genealogy“:

A very good guide, in the study of New England genealogy, is given by the Christian name. In some families, Simon, Stephen and Thomas may follow down the line of sons; while others carry only John, James and William. Genealogists have great confidence in this clue, for those Christian old worthies used to name their sons after themselves and their fathers. They had not evolved into the “Vernons” and “Cecils” and “Irvings” of now-a-days; these modern names which mean nothing but a morbid craving for the romantic and unusual. Romances guide the Christian names of babies today, alas, instead of sense of family loyalty. Have we not lost something of the real spirit of genuineness and fealty with the changed nomenclature of our babies?

From a review of the documentary The Ashley Madison Affair in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Ashley Madison launched in 2001 and took its name from the two most popular baby names at the time, “Ashley” and “Madison.” Right away, that’s creepy.

[Not technically true, but close. Ashley and Madison were the 4th- and 2nd-most popular baby girl names in the U.S. that year. In Canada — which is where the dating website is based — they ranked 13th and 4th.]

From a 1964 article in the Eugene Register-Guard called “Quite a Problem, Naming the Baby“:

The American melting pot has made something of a stew of old world cultures. Isaac and Rebecca Goldberg are the parents not of Moses and Rachael, but of Donald and Marie. Hjalmar and Sigrid Johanson are the parents of Richard and Dorothy. It seems rather a shame that Axel and Jens, Helma and Ingeborg, not to mention Stanislaus and Giacomo and Pedro and Vladimir have just about disappeared. The custom seems to be for the first generation to anglicize the given name as soon as possible. The next generation or two branches out and we get Pat Johnson, even Angus Puccini. Then, after a few generations, there is a tentative reach backward for the Shawns or even the Seans. Katy’s real name may again be Caitlin, Pat’s Padriac.

Have you spotted any interesting name-related quotes/articles/blog posts lately? Let me know!