by Pamela Redmond Satran

There’s a new girls’ name heading the list of popular baby names 2016, with Olivia claiming Nameberry’s official Number 1 spot.

Ezra holds his place at the top of the boys’ popular names list, a position the Biblical name claimed in 2015.

Olivia replaces Charlotte, the girls’ top name for 2015, which slips to Number 3. Amelia, Ava, and Isla round out the girls’ Top 5. Five new girls’ names ascend to the Top 10 in 2016: Arabella, Aurora, Adeline, Isabella, and Mia.

The Top 5 boys’ names retain the order they claimed for 2015: Ezra, Asher, Atticus, Declan, and Oliver. Only two names are new to the boys’ Top 10 in 2016: Levi and Wyatt.

Nameberry ranks which names attract the most views of nearly 40 million visits to its name pages in the first half of 2016. The list gauges the baby names that are winning the most attention from parents-to-be right now, and may predict which names will be used most for babies in the future.

Aryan is the hottest boys’ name for the first half of 2016, rising 49 places. An Indo-Iranian name that means warrior or honorable, Aryan is Number 697 on the official US popularity list. But its controversial nature related to White Supremacy undoubtedly accounts for some of its attention.

Other hot baby names for boys, all up more than 40 places, are John, Tobias, Daniel, Xavier, and Maxwell.

For girls, the hottest name so far this year is Sadie, up 48 places. Other girls’ names up more than 30 places in 2016 are Elise, Astrid, Isabella, and Thea.

Newcomers to the 2016 Top 100 include several unusual names we may hear lots more of in coming years. For girls, these are Anouk, Cecilia, Freya, and Ophelia. For boys, they are Alistair, Hugo, and Lucian.

Here’s the full Top 100 for girls’ and boys’ for the first half of 2016.

girls

boys

Research by Esmeralda Rocha.