Some baby names might sound more pleasant to the ears than others.
That’s at least what one baby gift website has determined after partnering with a linguistics expert and running a phonetics translation program.
My 1st Years, a personalized baby gift website headquartered in Northamptonshire, England, gathered 400 of the “most popular” baby names for boys and girls in the U.S. and U.K. from name lists on BabyCentre UK – a parenting website – and whittled down the list to the top 50 names, according to a recent blog post the company published on the topic.
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Researchers at My 1st Years reportedly consulted Dr. Bodo Winter, an associate professor in cognitive linguistics at the University of Birmingham in England, on linguistic theory to determine “beautiful names,” and then entered names through the toPhonetics translator, an online phonetics translation program that demonstrates American and British pronunciations of words.
“Any names which we could not translate using the toPhonetics translator were excluded, for consistency purposes,” My 1st Years noted in the methodology section of their beautiful names blog post.
The baby gift company then scored the popular baby names that successfully passed through the toPhonetics translator with a “valence figure” for each phoneme – the smallest unit of sound – that makes up a name, according to a valence table published in a 2018 research paper from The University of Warwick, entitled: “Emotional sound symbolism: Languages rapidly signal valence via phonemes.”
“We calculated the sum of each name’s score, using these final figures to rank each list of top 50 names,” My 1st Years wrote.
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In the U.S., the name Matthew – meaning “gift of god” in Hebrew – scored highest for boys while the name Sophia – meaning “wisdom” in Greek – scored highest for girls, according to My 1st Years.
– Matthew
– Julian
– William
– Isaiah
– Leo
– Levi
– Joseph
– Theo
– Isaac
– Samuel
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– Sophia
– Zoe
– Everly
– Sophie
– Riley
– Ivy
– Paisley
– Willow
– Ellie
– Emily
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My 1st Years reported that Americans who choose baby names from popular name lists are often picking names with “positive connotations,” especially when it comes to young boys.
The girl names that appeared on My 1st Years’ “most beautiful” list often started with the letter “e,” including Ellie, Emily, Evelyn, Eva and Elena, or were associated with “shrubbery,” including Ivy, Lily and Violet, in the U.S.
In the U.K., the name Zayn – meaning “beauty, grace” in Arabic and has been favored after the rise of singer Zayn Malik (former member of pop band One Direction) – scored highest for boys while the name Sophia, again, scored highest for girls, according to My 1st Years.
– Zayn
– Jesse
– Charlie
– Louie
– William
– Freddie
– George
– Ali
– Daniel
– Riley
– Sophia
– Zoe
– Rosie
– Sophie
– Ivy
– Phoebe
– Violet
– Willow
– Hannah
– Ellie
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My 1st Years reported that citizens of the U.K. might be influenced by celebrities and the British royal family when naming children, especially for young boys.
The boy names that appeared on My 1st Years’ “most beautiful” list included Liam and Harry, two names also associated with One Direction, as well as Louie, William and George, three names associated with the Duke of Cambridge (Prince William) and his sons (Prince Louis and Prince George).
For girls, My 1st Years found popular shrubbery-derived names like Ivy and Willow might be influenced by Beyoncé’s daughter, Blue Ivy, and Will Smith’s daughter, Willow.
Other girl names that were found to be “beautiful” in the U.K. ended with an “ee” sound, according to My 1st Years, including Zoe, Rosie, Sophie, Phoebe and Ellie.
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“The names that ranked the most highly, provoked the most positive emotions when spoken out loud and therefore are likely to sound most beautiful to the human ear,” Dr. Bodo Winter said in a statement.
He continued, “While the study conducted by My 1st Years is very comparable to the types of studies that would also be conducted by linguistic research, there are of course some limitations and additional factors to consider, from accents to family history, which can all influence how we interpret names.”
To see My 1st Years’ full beautiful baby names study, you can visit my1styears.com/blog.
