The hottest baby names of 2017—so far

The Most Popular Baby Names of 2017 at the half-year mark are in. The big news, for a change, is with boys’ names, with Asher reclaiming the crown from Ezra at Number 1.

And there’s more hot news: Nearly a fifth of all boys’ names on the Top 100 are new ones compared with Nameberry’s 2016 list of popular names, with such style darlings as Kane, Magnus, Arlo and Cassius moving into the spotlight.

Boys’ names new to the Top 10 are Theodore, perhaps catapulted into the spotlight as the name of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s youngest child, and Jasper.

On the girls’ side, things are relatively more stable, with Olivia, a name that’s never reached the top of the official US charts, hanging on as the Number 1 girls’ name. Amelia and Charlotte remain in second and third place.

The new names in the girls’ Top 10 are classics Evelyn, Penelope, and Eleanor. Celeste, Ines, Fiona, Saskia and Alexandra are the more surprising five new names on the girls’ Top 100.

The half-year popularity list is calculated by looking at traffic data to gauge which names were viewed most often by our visitors in the first half of 2017. This level of interest is one of the best ways to gauge future name popularity along with identifying current baby name trends.

Note: The official list of Most Popular Names on Nameberry shows rankings for that month only, and so those numbers are going to be different from these half-year statistics.