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Last updated on Thursday, July 10, 2014
(NEW YORK) - The mid-year tally of the most popular baby names of 2014 is in, with Imogen and Asher — two names that barely registered a generation ago — claiming the top spots, according to the baby naming website Nameberry.com.
Silas, Jasper, and Milo have all risen into the Top 10 for boys, while the sedate Claire is the only new entrant into the girls' Top 10. Cordelia and Archer are the names that have risen the furthest in the first six months of the year.
The 2014 popular baby names list is based on the number of views each name attracted on Nameberry, out of a total of more than 100 million page views, for the first half of the year. Rather than a measure of what people named their babies in the past, like the official popularity lists from the U.S. and other countries, the Nameberry list gauges which names parents are most interested in for babies due to be born in coming months.
Top girls' name Imogen, a Shakespearean name popular in England, has never been in the U.S. Top 1000, with only 131 baby girls named Imogen in the U.S. in 2013. But there were close to 200,000 views of Imogen on Nameberry in the first half of 2014.
No. 1 boys' name Asher, a Biblical name meaning fortunate or happy, has zoomed up the U.S. popularity list over the past few decades and is poised to break into the official Top 100. There were nearly 150,000 views of the name Asher on Nameberry from January through June 2014.
Along with Cordelia and Archer, other fast-rising names include Ellie, Adeline, and Ruby for girls; and Knox, Bodhi, Soren, and Wyatt for boys.
New entries to the Top 100 include Khaleesi from "Game of Thrones," at No. 18, and Elsa from "Frozen." Along with Katniss from "The Hunger Games" and Hazel from "The Fault in Our Stars," names that rank high in 2014 show the continued influence of celebrities and pop culture.
But the influence of a movie or television character on baby names can be fickle. Names that fell the furthest from their 2013 status were the pop culture-driven Hadley, Everly, and Merida for girls, along with Jayden, Gray, and Aiden for boys.
Here's the Nameberry Top 10 baby names for 2014... so far:
Girls:
1. Imogen
2. Charlotte
3. Isla
4. Cora
5. Penelope
6. Violet
7. Amelia
8. Eleanor
9. Harper
10. Claire
Boys:
1. Asher
2. Declan
3. Atticus
4. Finn
5. Oliver
6. Henry
7. Silas
8. Jasper
9. Milo
10. Jude
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