How To Find Popular Baby Names

What's in a name?  One thing that keeps a pregnant mom busy is searching for the perfect name for her unborn child.  Choosing a name is a very important parental task.  It is where your child will gain his earliest sense of self-identity.  The name also contributes to your child's persona.  From the moment the name is given, it becomes part of your child's personality.  It is believed that the name you choose exudes an energy that will influence your child's life.

There may be unique family traditions or cultural guidelines in choosing baby names.  One obvious step in choosing a baby name is following a pattern.  Often, parents assign a name with the same beginning letter as the older sibling's name or at least make it sound a little more like it.  Other parents choose name variations of a grandparent's name.  Other parents base their name choosing on their religious affiliation.

When the need arises, most parents scan popular baby names to guide them in choosing their future baby's name.  There are many online resources nowadays that help parents with this task.  The government's Social Security alone has an available database of popular baby names.  Popularity is ranked based on the names of registered Social Security members and their dependents.  With such a rich database, the agency is able to filter the names according to city, state, and decade.  They even have a separate database on popular names of twins.  Basing on their database, the top ten popular names for boys in 2008 are the following:

1. Jacob
2. Michael
3. Ethan
4. Joshua
5. Daniel
6. Alexander
7. Anthony
8. William
9. Christopher
10. Matthew 

The top ten popular baby names for girls, meanwhile, are:

1. Emma
2. Isabella
3. Emily
4. Madison
5. Ava
6. Olivia
7. Sophia
8. Abigail
9. Elizabeth
10. Chloe

BabyNames.Com is also another site that has a database of the most popular names categorized into years.  Their database of popular names is based on the choices of their registered members.  Most of their members are expectant mothers or parents who are trying to conceive.  The ranked names also include alternate spellings of the same name. 

These are the top ten popular names for boys for 2008 listed on the website:

1. Aiden
2. Ethan
3. Noah
4. Kaden
5. Caleb
6. Braden
7. Jacob
8. Landon
9. Liam
10. Lucas

The following, meanwhile, are the top ten popular names for girls in 2008:

1. Ava
2. Isabella
3. Madeline
4. Emma
5. Abigail
6. Olivia
7. Lily
8. Sophia
9. Chloe
10. Ella

BabyCenter.Com also has their own list of popular baby names for boys and girls, and they are also based on the names of their members' babies.  Aside from the names listed above, Jayden, Noah, Jackson, and Logan join the roster of popular baby names for boys.  On the other hand, the names Madison and Hailey also join the list of popular names for girls.