Which names were the trendiest among baby girls in Canada last year?
Below you’ll find Canada’s fastest-rising and highest-debuting girl names of 2022.
Before we get to the names, though, please note that rises and debuts in the Canadian data aren’t going to be directly comparable to rises and debuts in the U.S. data, because Canada releases much less data than the U.S. does. Canada’s data only goes back to 1991, and only goes down to names given to five more more babies per gender, per year.
(The U.S. baby name data does have a similar 5-baby threshold for inclusion, but the U.S. is nearly nine times larger than Canada in terms of population. To make the cut-offs equivalent, you’d have to increase the U.S. number to something like 45 babies.)
Ok, now that that’s out of the way…
Rises (absolute)
Here are the girl names that saw the biggest increases in usage in terms of absolute change (numbers of babies) from 2021 to 2022:
- Millie, rose from 153 to 208 baby girls (+55)
- Wren, 233 to 281 (+48)
- Lily, 813 to 861 (+48)
- Ajooni, 53 to 95 (+42)
- Selena, 154 to 195 (+41)
- Selena was tied with Myla and Eloise, both of which also increased by 41 babies.
Ajooni may have been influenced by the Hindi-language soap opera Ajooni, which aired from mid-2022 to mid-2023 on the Disney-owned TV channel Star Bharat.
Rises (relative)
Here are the girl names that saw the biggest increases in usage in terms of relative change (percentages of babies) from 2021 to 2022:
- Harnaaz, rose from 11 to 49 baby girls (345% increase)
- Anabia, 8 to 29 (263%)
- Lindsey, 6 to 21 (250%)
- Raunak, 6 to 21 (250%)
- Rya, 5 to 17 (240%)
Harnaaz, which was also one of the fast-rising girl names in the U.S. last year, was influenced by beauty queen Harnaaz Sandhu of India. She was crowned Miss Universe in December of 2021.
Debuts
Finally, here are the girl names that debuted most impressively in Canada’s baby name data in 2022:
- Cirilla, 17 baby girls
- Halston, 13
- Hiraya, 12
- Wrenlee, 11
- Ozzy, 11
Cirilla was no doubt inspired by the character Princess Cirilla from The Witcher, which began as a series of fantasy novels, but has since been made into a Netflix series (among other things). Cirilla debuted in the U.S. data in 2016 with about the same number of babies, interestingly.
Other girl-name debuts included Laramie (6), Peach (6), Winslet (6), and Valley (5).
And, just in case you’re curious about the decreases, Canada’s fastest-falling girl names in terms of absolute change were Olivia, Ava, and Emma, and in terms of relative change were Tiaraoluwa, Addisyn, and Kaila.
Sources: First names at birth by sex at birth, selected indicators (Number) – Statistics Canada, Baby Names Observatory – Statistics Canada
Image: Adapted from Turkey-2036 by Dennis Jarvis under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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