Baby Center has just released their Top 100 Baby Names for 2008.

It’s no surprise that names ending with ‘-en’ are taking up the top few positions, since this was already pointed out in parenting magazines and websites, with names such as ‘Aiden’, ‘Jayden’,  ‘Brayden’ etc being some of the most popular names.

Here’s Baby Center’s findings on the trends for boy names in 2008:

• Names that end with -en dominated the top 10 (Aiden, Jayden, and Caden). Cleveland Evans says the –en sound is comforting, making for a cool juxtaposition of serenity and testosterone.
• Forty percent of boys’ names end in “n.”
• One-syllable choices abound: Jack, Luke, Max, Cole, Sean, Chase, John, Miles, Bryce, Will.
• Still, two-syllable names account for 9 of the top 10.
• There are 26 letters in the alphabet, but C trumps them all: Out of 100 names, 14 start with C: Caden, Caleb, Connor, Cameron, Carter, Chase, Colin, Cole, Cooper, Carson, Colton, Christian, Charlie, Christopher.

Many of the names mentioned in their top list appear to be more common in the West than in our Asian regions, though Baby Center mentioned that their findings were based on the names of their site’s registered members’ children. I don’t really hear parents naming their children ‘Miles’, ‘Will’, ‘Connor’ or ‘Cole’ in our vicinity.

Names starting with the ‘smaller’ alphabets (meaning the first few alphabets such as ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’) seem to be more popular too, perhaps so that the children can be placed higher in the name roster when they are in schools? (Teacher: “Okay here’s #34 — Zack. Zack, are you in class today? Zack, wake up! Why are you always asleep during roll calls?”)

As for Darius, it’s not in the Top 100 List (far from it in fact), which is quite expected. It has never been a common or popular name to start with. Personally, I have never even heard of this name before Catherine was pregnant. Actually, I would prefer it being an uncommon name so we won’t have name clash issues in the future when he’s schooling (Teacher: “Is Darius present? No, not you, Darius Tan. I’m referring to Darius Chua.”).

Being Catholics, we choose christian names that are named from a saint (see Baby Names) so we didn’t have the liberty to create custom-made names or choose from ‘non-saint names’. This is actually good as we won’t have to worry over the virtually unlimited choices of names possible.

I’m also susprised that the name ‘Darius’ has been used as a girl’s name, though very rarely. Actually I am wondering if the members have entered the gender of their children wrongly, thus leading to this statistic? Still, ‘Darius’ is quite a gender-neutral name so probably it will still work well as a girl’s name. (‘Max’ or ‘John’ for your girl’s name, anyone? ^^|)

(Click here for the meaning of Darius)

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