Which name is hotter, is it Osama or George ? Well, it depends who you ask.

When choosing a name for a baby, many of us feel it is the most important thing to have a name that is close to you and your partner's heart, giving less consideration to opinions of friends, family, or the current trends in society.

While this is probably a good way to go at it, the question is asked – to what degree can we really separate ourselves from what is going on around us? Or in other words – can we really ignore trends?

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Looking at the statistics from the last ten years gives us an answer – no, we can't. Even the desire for unique and unusual names, we find more and more in parents today, can be considered as a trend – the traditional, some might say old fashioned names, very popular up to just one decade ago, are slowly fading away in the new generation. The 21'st century is definitely characterized by individuality and creativity in choosing baby names. While during the 1950's the top ten list of most popular names accounted for a quarter of all babies born on those years, today the top ten list accounts for less than a tenth. Once popular names such as John, Jim, Fred, Hanna, and others are now considered too ordinary and old for most parents.  

Visit our Advanced Search Tool to search for names that are most popular among our readers. 

Naturally, as in any kind of trend, there are those "fashion victims", the ones who take too far and choose a name so extraordinary, that it is considered bizarre and could cause serious problems for their child, especially growing up and during puberty. We see a lot of these amongst Hollywood celebrity babies, where all rules seem to be broken, and standing out is the only objective – e.g. Apple (Gwenyth Paltrow), Camera (Arthur Ashe) or Zola Ivy (Eddie Murphy).  For a child without a famous background, these names could become a hurdle.

Unique as these new-age names might be, it seems most of them fall into one or more of a few categories:

• Imported foreign names (Giovani, Dario, Tatiana)
• Surnames used as first names (Hunter, Madison)
• Mixture of two names (Cayden, Kailee)
• Common words (Nova, Heaven)
• Alternative spelling (Ryann, Delyia)
• The "retro" fashion – names which used to be common, but are rarely used today (Hanna, Olivia)

Related Readings:

• Advanced Search
• Popular celebrity baby names
• Unique celebrity baby names
  

Which name do you believe will be trendy during 2007? Write your names suggestions in our comments and we will add them to a new article.

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