In a stunning upset, the ancient boys’ name Atticus has jumped to the top of the baby name popularity list for 2017.


Atticus is the Number one name for boys on Nameberry’s list of Most Popular Baby Names of 2017, with Olivia the top girls’ name for the second year in a row.

While girls’ names conventionally move up and down the fashion ladder more quickly, this year’s Nameberry list is more volatile on the boys’ side, with more new entries in the count of Top 1000 baby names and more names making dramatic shifts up or down the ladder

That’s evidence of a sea change in how parents choose names for their sons, says Nameberry’s cofounder Pamela Redmond Satran, moving away from family names and traditional male choices and judging boys’ names the same way they do girls,’ with style the driving factor.

Nameberry’s popular names list measures which names attract the largest share of the site’s nearly 250 million page views, versus how many babies actually receive that name. It’s a gauge of parents’ interest in baby names, according to Satran, and a predictor of which names will become more popular in the future.

Three new names vaulted onto the Top 10 this year for each gender: Cora, Maia and Amara for girls, and Theodore, Jasper, and Henry for boys. Maia is the most surprising newcomer to the group, also new to the Nameberry Top 100 and among the US Top 1000 baby names for only a decade.

Here is the complete Top 10 baby names list for each gender.

2017 Top 10 Names for Girls

  1. Olivia
  2. Cora*
  3. Amelia
  4. Charlotte
  5. Isla
  6. Isabella
  7. Maia*
  8. Aurora
  9. Amara*
  10. Ava

2017 Top 10 Names for Boys

  1. Atticus
  2. Asher
  3. Jack
  4. Theodore*
  5. Jasper*
  6. Milo
  7. Oliver
  8. Silas
  9. Henry*
  10. Wyatt

*New in 2017

On Nameberry’s Top 100, new entrants besides Maia on the girls’ side are Rumi, the name of Beyonce and Jay-Z’s baby daughter, along with Alexandra, Allegro, Brielle, Celeste, and Elena.

There are more than twice as many new names on the boys’ Top 100. They are:

  • Adam
  • Augustus
  • Caspian
  • Charlie
  • Dante
  • Edward
  • Emmett
  • Everett
  • Ian
  • Jonathan
  • Kane
  • Kian
  • Magnus
  • Maverick
  • Rhett
  • Winston
  • Xander

The girls’ names vaulting furthest up the list in 2017 are Evelyn, Amara, Naomi, Ada, and Phoebe, all up more than 20 places.

For boys, names that rose 20 or more places are Leo, Harvey, Kai, Liam, Arthur, Cassius, George, Finn, Ryker, Louis, Harry, and Jude.

Names with ties to mythology, ancient cultures, and classic literature, influences that topped our baby name trend predictions for 2017, dominate Nameberry’s popular names list .

Atticus qualifies on two counts. It’s the name of a Roman literary figure as well as the first name of the hero of Harper Lee’s beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

Number 2 girls’ name Cora has mythological roots—it’s another name for Persephone, goddess of fertility and the underworld—and is also the first name of the heroine of the classic American novel Last of the Mohicans.

Maia is the Greek mother of Hermes and the Roman goddess of spring.

Rumi is the name of an ancient Muslim (male) poet and Phoebe is another name for the goddess of the moon and also figures in the New Testament, Shakespeare, and Catcher in the Rye.

On the boys’ side, Silas relates to the Roman god of trees, Augustus is the name of a Roman Emperor, and Magnus is a royal appellation meaning “greatest.”

Caspian is a name from The Chronicles of Narnia and Dante was a medieval poet.

Other mythological and literary names on the rise include Ophelia, Freya and Esme for girls; Cassius, Axel, and Felix for boys.

With 5 million monthly visitors from around the globe, Nameberry is the world’s largest baby name site.

Here are the Top 100 Names for Girls in 2017:

  1. Olivia
  2. Cora
  3. Amelia
  4. Charlotte
  5. Isla
  6. Isabella
  7. Maia
  8. Aurora
  9. Amara
  10. Ava
  11. Rumi
  12. Penelope
  13. Evelyn
  14. Ophelia
  15. Rose
  16. Eleanor
  17. Violet
  18. Luna
  19. Arabella
  20. Hazel
  21. Imogen
  22. Esme
  23. Maeve
  24. Elizabeth
  25. Alice
  26. Audrey
  27. Adeline
  28. Genevieve
  29. Aurelia
  30. Thea
  31. Khaleesi
  32. Lucy
  33. Ivy
  34. Jane
  35. Emma
  36. Mia
  37. Eloise
  38. Claire
  39. Emilia
  40. Nora
  41. Iris
  42. Lydia
  43. Anna
  44. Astrid
  45. Lila
  46. Julia
  47. Sadie
  48. Elise
  49. Stella
  50. Isabel
  51. Scarlett
  52. Ada
  53. Evangeline
  54. Caroline
  55. Eliza
  56. Adelaide
  57. Matilda
  58. Aria
  59. Naomi
  60. Clara
  61. Phoebe
  62. Chloe
  63. Elodie
  64. Josephine
  65. Brielle
  66. Sienna
  67. Beatrice
  68. Molly
  69. Ella
  70. Mae
  71. Mila
  72. Allegro
  73. Hannah
  74. Celeste
  75. Seraphina
  76. Zoe
  77. Freya
  78. Sophia
  79. Maisie
  80. Gemma
  81. Willow
  82. Poppy
  83. Grace
  84. Margaret
  85. Madeline
  86. Emily
  87. Elena
  88. Daisy
  89. Maya
  90. Elsie
  91. Juliet
  92. Willa
  93. Ellie
  94. Jade
  95. Eliana
  96. Rebecca
  97. Zara
  98. Alexandra
  99. Evie
  100. Abigail

And here are 2017’s Top 100 Names for Boys:

  1. Atticus
  2. Asher
  3. Jack
  4. Theodore
  5. Jasper
  6. Milo
  7. Oliver
  8. Silas
  9. Henry
  10. Wyatt
  11. Leo
  12. Oscar
  13. Declan
  14. Xavier
  15. Felix
  16. Levi
  17. Finn
  18. Matthew
  19. Thomas
  20. Axel
  21. Sebastian
  22. Arthur
  23. Bodhi
  24. Alexander
  25. Kai
  26. Ethan
  27. Julian
  28. Benjamin
  29. William
  30. Caleb
  31. Zachary
  32. Aryan
  33. Liam
  34. Miles
  35. Elijah
  36. James
  37. Callum
  38. John
  39. Soren
  40. Charles
  41. Tobias
  42. Harvey
  43. Andrew
  44. Roman
  45. Eli
  46. Harry
  47. Harrison
  48. Ronan
  49. Ryker
  50. Ezra
  51. Nathaniel
  52. Cassius
  53. Jacob
  54. Jude
  55. Charlie
  56. Dante
  57. Isaac
  58. George
  59. Archer
  60. Samuel
  61. Lachlan
  62. Hugo
  63. Luke
  64. Magnus
  65. Isaiah
  66. Rhett
  67. Daniel
  68. Jonathan
  69. Gideon
  70. Lucas
  71. Graham
  72. Owen
  73. Wesley
  74. Louis
  75. Maverick
  76. Josiah
  77. Lucian
  78. Joseph
  79. Lewis
  80. Augustus
  81. Simon
  82. Gabriel
  83. Everett
  84. Kian
  85. Vincent
  86. Xander
  87. Kane
  88. Nolan
  89. Griffin
  90. David
  91. Emmett
  92. Ian
  93. Adam
  94. Caspian
  95. Nathan
  96. Winston
  97. Beckett
  98. Nicholas
  99. Edward
  100. Knox

Original story by Pamela Redmond Satran for NameBerry.