The UK's top 100 baby names of 2016

Alice Sholl
·Contributor
Baby feet
[Photo: Pexels]

The year is drawing to a close which, despite being a rather rocky one, has welcomed millions of little ones into the world.

And as usual some names have proven far more popular than others as BabyCentre has ranked its top 100 names.

The pregnancy and parenting digital resource’s baby names survey includes the names chosen by 76,993 (41,158 boys and 35,775 girls) BabyCentre members who gave birth in 2016.

The inspiration behind some names is pretty obvious. For boys, Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ release in late 2015 resulted in many new Finns, Georges and Lucas’.

Baby girl
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The film may also have influenced girls’ names too. Lead character Rey was played by Daisy Ridley, and the floral name has gone up four places from number 30 to number 26.

It’s also the name of Olivia Wilde’s daughter born in October.

For boys, the very top name is Oliver while for girls it’s Olivia for the second year running (admit it, we all think “baby Ollie” sounds cute).

Baby mobile
[Photo: Pexels]

In the boys’ ranking Muhammad dropped from first to second this year, while Noah went from fourth to third.

And among the girls Lily has gone up one place to second, while Alice has risen nine places to number 19.

Whether it was author Harper Lee’s death this year or the continuing influence of the Beckhams, Harper has also risen 31 places from 87th to 56th.

Here are BabyCentre’s top ten girls’ and boys’ names 2016.

Girls 2016

  1. Olivia

  2. Lily

  3. Sophia

  4. Emily

  5. Amelia

  6. Ava

  7. Isla

  8. Isabella

  9. Isabelle

  10. Sophie

Boys 2016

  1. Oliver

  2. Muhammad

  3. Noah

  4. Harry

  5. Jack

  6. Charlie

  7. Jacob

  8. George

  9. Ethan

  10. Henry

Check out the full rankings here and here.

Curious about the most popular names in 2015 too? Here are last year’s by comparison:

Girls 2015

  1. Olivia

  2. Sophia

  3. Lily

  4. Emily

  5. Amelia

  6. Chloe

  7. Isabelle

  8. Sophie

  9. Ella

  10. Isabella

Boys 2015

  1. Muhammad

  2. Oliver

  3. Jack

  4. Noah

  5. Jacob

  6. Harry

  7. Charlie

  8. Ethan

  9. James

  10. Thomas

And here are the full boys‘ and girls‘ rankings for 2015 too.

Are you surprised at the results? Tweet us at @YahooStyleUK.

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