Name that Baby! Top 2023 Baby Names

Want to know the most popular baby names the year you were born? Check it out here.

Yes, baby names, especially decade over decade (it takes a couple of years for them to really jump around) change in popularity.

When the Social Security Administration released this year’s Top 10 names, I wasn’t surprised to see Liam at the top of the boys’ names, again. Both Liam and Olivia have held those top spots for five consecutive years.

As a Boomer, when I think of “Liam,” 71-year-old action hero Liam Neeson immediately comes to mind. You know that handsome Irish actor (who lived with actress Helen Mirren in the early ’80s, according to Wikipedia) known for saying: …but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.” Or “I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

I know him from his later work playing Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List in 1993 and playing Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace (1999), and then his jump to becoming my favorite action thriller hero Bryan Mills in Taken (2008) and Taken 2 (2012).

However, I never realized the breadth of Neeson’s work. His accolades include a nomination for an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA), three Golden Globes, and two Tony Awards.

But of course, it isn’t we Boomers who are having babies, so the name Liam Hemsworth may be more associated with Millennials and Gen Z. Another Liam, Liam Hemsworth, is an Australian actor born in 1990. He was briefly married to Miley Cyrus. (How come Miley isn’t up there in the top ten? Wait, babies named Miley ranked #452 in 2023 and #703 in 2022) He is notable for his television appearances as well in film: Independence Day: Resurgence 206 and The Hunger Games series.

And really, if you were 30 years old, would you name your son after Liam Neeson or Liam Hemsworth?

Another Liam well- known to younger women may be Liam Payne, 30, the English singer who rose to fame as a member of the boy band One Direction, which became the one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. Hard to believe. (Was Madonna ever a top ten name? No, never. Starting at #2,321 in 1897, to #1,712 in 1985 and now at #2,298 in 2023 Madonna has seen her peak.)

What did surprise me was the appearance of Evelyn, my mother’s name, on the 2023 list, taken from the Norman French, Aveline and the Hebrew, Eve. According to Wikipedia, nearly all the notable Evelyns were born from 1868 (Evelyn Campbell, a British-born American actress) through the 1900s; the last prominent Evelyn, a Hungarian swimmer, was born in 1989. Not too many Evelyns that speak to our child-bearing children.

However, Evelyn did spend most of the past century in the top 100 girls’ names, with a peak in 1917 and a dip in the 1950s and early 2000s.

So why so many Evelyns in this current child-bearing group? When I asked several Evelyns age 10 and under,  they said they were named to honor someone. Okay. What goes around comes around. Or is it what comes around goes around?

As number nine in this past year’s girl’s names, look for lots of little Evelyns entering pre-school at the same time.

The other surprise on the 20203 list was the boy’s name Mateo, which went from number 11 in 2022 to number 6 in 2023. Said Sophie Kihm, editor-in-chief of the baby name website Nameberry, “We don’t see that (yearly jump) very often at the top of the charts,” says

According to the Social Security Administration, more than 11,000 babies were named Mateo last year, the highest number on record. Mateo, which means “gift of God,” began ranking in the top 1,000 in 1995, said Kihm. Two decades later, it had reached the top 100 and in recent years its popularity intensified at an even faster rate.

Kihm, who also works as a consultant helping people name and rename (really?) their babies, points to several trends she believes have contributed to Mateo’s rise, including the country’s growing Latino population.

It’s increasingly common for people of different backgrounds to turn to their heritage when naming their babies, she said. But, she added, Mateo also has cross-cultural appeal, as all names that reach the top tier of the Social Security Administration’s list have.

“It feels friendlier and more accessible than Matthew. It has that nice ‘-o’ ending, which people really like right now.,” she said. “It feels very fresh, but it still is traditional.”

But one pop culture icon that didn’t see a bump on the baby name list last year, despite overwhelming box-office success of the movie boasting her name: Barbie.

Just 32 people in the United States named their child Barbie last year, according to official data, only a slight increase from the previous year; it didn’t even appear on the “top 1,000” baby name list. And neither did Ken. (I’m just Ken.)

It will be interesting to watch the names as the grandchildren roll in this year.

You can reach Annette Kurman at annette.kurman@gmail.com