Isabella Topples Emma as Most Popular Girls Name

Isabella is now the most popular name for girls according to statistics released by the Social Security Administration Friday, April 30, 2010. While many are crediting the "Twilight" series with this so-called shake-up, the vampires may be responsible for the jump in popularity in the last couple of years, but actually Isabella has been pretty popular for quite a while.

According to current statistics, a little more than 22,000 girls born in 2009 were named Isabella, followed by Emma, Olivia, Sophia and Ava. Nearly 21,000 boys were named Jacob, followed by Ethan, Michael, Alexander and William.

But, according to Best Nickname Tees, a site that lists the names by letter and adds the social security stats by decade and letter at the bottom of the page, Isabella has ranked high, at least for names starting with the letter "I," since the year 2000. Emma also entered popular girls name starting with E in 2000, along with Emily. Before that, Erica and Erin were the rage.

The way the top names are sorted by letter on this site produces a bit of a different look at the Top 500 popular names. Using the Top 500 actually shows a lot more popular names starting with the same letter so, I guess, you can even figure out where your kid will end up alphabetically.

As for boys, SSA said that Jacob continues an 11-year run as the most popular baby name for boys. Best Nickname statistics show other popular boys name beginning with J are Jack, showing up in the top 500 in 2000, and Jackson showing up in 2005.

Rounding out the Top 10 names for girls in 2009 were:Emily, Madison, Abigail, Chloe and Mia.

For boys, names 6 through 10 in 2009 were:Joshua, Daniel, Jayden, Noah and Anthony.

More interesting observations:

-- Jayden and Noah made it to the Top 10 for boys for the first time.
-- The girls name Mia also showed up for the first time in Top 10 list.
-- the fastest rising baby boy name in 2009 is Cullen, after "Twilight" vampire Edward Cullen. We can only imagine how long it will be before that one becomes unisex.
-- Malia, the name of President Barack Obama's eldest daughter, made the biggest jump, from 345th in 2008 to 192 in 2009.

As for my own name, I was the only one of 5 children to be given a French name. All my siblings were given common Irish names, except the only other girl was given a French middle name "Celeste" after our great-grandfather, Celestin.

Even my middle name was unusual back then. Lauren is not too uncommon nowadays but back during the years I went to school, Lauren Bacall was about the only one anyone ever heard of and her real name is Betty. Throughout elementary school, to the best of my recollection, I only had another kid in the same class as me with the same name once. I went to Catholic schools and the nuns would never cease calling me "Valeria," to make use of their ample knowledge of Latin, I'm sure. In 2009 Valerie ranked 138th in popularity, and incredibly -- at least to me -- Valeria ranked 72nd.

Check out your own name on the Social Security Popular Baby Names page:

Sources: Embedded