Baby Name: Luka

Yesterday we looked at some of the latest girl name data, so today let’s check in on the 2019 boy names…

Here are the most popular boy names overall:

1. Liam, 20,502 baby boys
2. Noah, 19,048
3. Oliver, 13,891
4. William, 13,542
5. Elijah, 13,300
6. James, 13,087
7. Benjamin, 12,942
8. Lucas, 12,412
9. Mason, 11,408
10. Ethan, 11,241

Ethan kicked Logan out of the top 10 last year. (Logan is now ranked 16th.)

The boy names that saw the largest increases in usage in terms of absolute numbers of babies were…

1. Brooks, increased by 1,114 babies
2. Miles, 860
3. Legend, 832
4. Luca, 797
5. Theodore, 775
6. Mateo, 757
7. Leo, 702
8. Maverick, 701
9. Noah, 698
10. Luka, 652

The boy names that saw the largest increases in usage in terms of relative numbers of babies were…

1. Ermias, increased by 3360%
2. Sekani, 1992%
3. Amenadiel, 500%
4. Kross, 481%
5. Alexios, 429%
6. Taz, 340%
7. Ezran, 333%
8. Andoni, 309%
9. Kaleel, 300%
10. Taysom, 295%

Some explanations…

• Ermias was the legal first name of rapper Nipsey Hussle (who died on March 31, 2019).
• Sekani was the name of a young character in the film The Hate U Give (2018).
• Amenadiel is a character on the TV series Lucifer.
• Ezran is the name of a character on the Netflix series The Dragon Prince. (Ezran debuted in the data in 2018, the year the show started airing.)
• Taysom Hill is a professional football player with the New Orleans Saints.

Here are the boy names that debuted most impressively in the 2019 data:

1. Armias, debuted with 54 baby boys
2. Izhaan, 50
3. Jsan, 33
4. Jaiari, 29
5. Ripp, 26
6. Sakani, 21
7. Jardani, 19
8. Iskender, 17
9. Kamiri, 17
10. Siar, 14

• Armias and Sakani are spelling variants of Ermias and Sekani (above).
• Izhaan is a celebrity baby: Izhaan Mirza Malik was born in October of 2018 to Indian tennis player Sania Mirza and Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik.
• Jardani could be from Jardani Jovonovich, the “real” name of popular movie character John Wick…?

The boy names that saw the largest decreases in usage in terms of absolute numbers of babies were…

1. Logan, decreased by 1,911 babies
2. Michael, -1,174
3. Jacob, -1,159
4. Dylan, -1,076
5. Mason, -1,065
6. William, -1,048
7. Connor, -932
8. David, -871
9. Ryan, -837
10. Joshua, -836

The boy names that saw the largest decreases in usage in terms of relative numbers of babies were Nomar and Gianlucas (tied at -73%), and the boy name that saw the steepest drop off the list was Stephano (from 21 babies in 2018 to fewer than 5 in 2019).

If you can explain any of these rises (or drops), please leave a comment!

Source: SSA

Image: Adapted from Flag of the United States (public domain)