The long and short of it is that U.S. parents don’t choose long and short baby names as often as they choose mid-length baby names. The most popular lengths for baby names in 2016? 6 letters, followed by 5 letters, followed by 7 letters…yet again.
Here’s a chart showing the length breakdown for girl names:
The most-used girl names per length (from 2 to 10 letters) last year were…
- 2 letters: An, Jo, Eh, Vy, Bo
- 3 letters: Ava, Mia, Zoe, Eva, Ivy
- 4 letters: Emma, Ella, Aria, Lily, Zoey
- 5 letters: Emily, Sofia, Avery, Grace, Chloe
- 6 letters: Olivia, Sophia, Harper, Amelia, Evelyn
- 7 letters: Abigail, Madison, Lillian, Addison, Natalie
- 8 letters: Isabella, Scarlett, Victoria, Penelope, Brooklyn
- 9 letters: Charlotte, Elizabeth, Gabriella, Mackenzie, Katherine
- 10 letters: Alexandria, Evangeline, Jacqueline, Alessandra, Clementine
And here’s the breakdown for boy names:
The most-used boy names per length (from 2 to 10 letters) were…
- 2 letters: Ty, Bo, Om, Aj, Cy
- 3 letters: Eli, Leo, Ian, Max, Kai
- 4 letters: Noah, Liam, Owen, John, Luke
- 5 letters: Mason, James, Jacob, Ethan, Lucas
- 6 letters: Elijah, Oliver, Daniel, Joseph, Samuel
- 7 letters: William, Michael, Matthew, Jackson, Gabriel
- 8 letters: Benjamin, Jonathan, Jeremiah, Nicholas, Theodore
- 9 letters: Alexander, Sebastian, Christian, Nathaniel, Alejandro
- 10 letters: Maximilian, Alessandro, Kristopher, Alexzander, Cristopher
Finally, here are both genders on the same chart:
Here’s last year’s post on the top name lengths of 2015, if you’d like to compare.