One, Two, Three, Four,
2006’s Top Baby Boys;
Namesakes none, but we pretend,
Aiden, Caden, Braden and Jayden!

According to the “Top 20″ favorite names of the over one million members of BabyNames.com, for boys in 2006 it was — Aiden, Caden, Braden and Jayden, coming in at #1, #2, #3, and #4. Although it sounds like a nursery rhyme, it isn’t. Those were the four most popular names for new baby boys during the past year amongst Internet baby namers, followed by #5, the closely sounding “Ethan”.

Continuing the BabyNames.com love of the “en” or “an” suffix, further on down the list are “Logan”, “Hayden”, “Dylan”, “Ryan”, “Cameron” and “Tristan”.

The formerly beloved “John” did not make the cut. In fact, “Ethan”, “Noah”, “Jacob”, “Caleb” and “Aaron” are the only biblical names I recognize in the top twenty, and those are all from the Old Testament. Christian Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, Paul and Peter are now passe, and the Koran’s “Mohammad” has not yet made it.

The girls names, thankfully, include some of the favorite traditional ones, with Abigail and Emma at the top and Emily #20. The popular English/American girls’ moniker, “Elizabeth”, is no longer found on the top 20, but continues as the Scottish/Romance form, “Isabel, Isabella”. Yet the quirky habit continues of choosing favorite girls’ names from family surnames that have no relation at all to the family of the baby namers. On this top twenty list of favorites are “Madison, Bailey, Taylor, and Hailey”. These names come down to us from the old-fashioned American tradition of paying tribute to mothers or grandmothers by using their surnames as middle names for newborns. Today, one would be hard pressed to find a girl named “Madison, Bailey, Taylor, and Hailey”, who was actually related to any of those families, much less a namesake for a beloved family member. The same goes for some of the baby boys’ names such as “Conner”.

Quirky indeed! The modern generation of baby namers prefer to honor famous or infamous Hollywood stars or the children of Hollywood stars by naming their children for them, rather than for their own family members of an older generation or for history’s Christian saints.