TOP BABY NAME OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO….

Graphic1Here are the most popular baby girl and boy names of 2014, according to BabyCenter, a pregnancy and parenting online resource.

This makes the second year in a row for the boys most popular name and five years for the girls.

And when you’re finished reading the most popular names – click on ‘unique and surprising’ names.

Here are the top 10 names for each gender. The site’s listings come from about 406,000 parents registered on the BabyCenter website who shared their baby names. Different spellings of names have been combined.

10 most popular girl names of 2014:

  1. Sophia
  2. Emma
  3. Olivia
  4. Ava
  5. Isabella
  6. Mia
  7. Zoe
  8. Lily
  9. Emily
  10. Madelyn

10 most popular boy names of 2014:

  1. Jackson
  2. Aiden
  3. Liam
  4. Lucas
  5. Noah
  6. Mason
  7. Ethan
  8. Caden
  9. Jacob
  10. Logan

BabyCenter has also listed the most “unique and surprising” baby names of the year, which is worth a bemused perusal. The names include Amore, Rhythm, Finnick (hello,Hunger Games) and Zeppelin.

The survey also found that 94% of parents used social media/technology to announce the name (58% used Facebook).