Most Popular Baby Names

Each year, the Social Security Administration publishes a list of the top 10 boys names and the top 10 girls names. This is a good thing, because we face the dilemma of picking something cool, but not too popular, classic, but not boring, interesting, but not too weird. We better think fast, 'cause Shannon's getting big (see left).

So we generally stay away from the top 10 names...but who's to say whatever we pick won't be in the top 10 list next year?

Here's the list: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

If you want to play at home, I can tell you that of the top 10 boys' names and the top 10 girls' names, we only have ONE on our baby name short list -- for either gender. Can you guess which?

Another site has a Baby Name Voyager that graphs out the popularity of names over the last 100+ years...sorry, Harvey and Leona, your names haven't done so well lately. But you'll see a lot of older names that are now on an upswing. (We actually know a little boy named Augustus.)