Shakeup in the baby-name game as Sophia, Jackson take top spot

Royal babies, unusual spellings help oust longtime favourites

Sorry, Olivia and Liam, you had a good run — but now it’s someone else’s turn.

Ontario has released its list of the top 20 baby names in the province for 2014, and there are two new kids at the top — Sophia and Jackson.

The province has been keeping babyname records since 1917, with various so- cial trends influencing naming conventions across the years. The latest list suggests parents are inspired by pop culture, Anne-Marie Flanagan, a spokeswoman for Ontario’s Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, said Tuesday.

Khaleesi, a title for a female character in the TV series Game of Thrones and books by George R. R. Martin, makes an appearance as the name of a “handful” of girls born in 2014, Flanagan said.

There were also some girls named Piper (or Pyper), a nod to the lead character on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black.

But tradition stills plays a big part in naming trends.

The birth of Charlotte, princess of Cambridge, this summer may have sparked a regal trend in baby names. Victoria, Andrew, Elizabeth and William were popular choices, with Charlotte coming in at No. 5 on the list.

The 2014 list — 74,247 boys and 70,675 girls — was the first time Ontario combined alternative spellings of names pronounced the same way in its annual baby name statistics, a nod to the increasingly popular trend of picking “unique names or different spellings of names,” Flanagan said.

For example: Sophia, Sofia, Sofiya are counted as the same name. So are Jackson, Jaxon, Jaxson, Jaxen, Jaxxon and Jaxyn.

But as more parents use more unusual spellings or names, the top baby names in Ontario are actually fewer in number than they were several decades ago.

Jennifer was the top name for Ontario girls in 1975, for example, with 2,873 getting that handle, while 2014’s top name for girls was Sophia, which was given 972 times in all its varied spellings.

“We just don’t see those high numbers at the top anymore because parents are more focused on trying to come up with something unique,” Flanagan said.

Olivia and Liam had topped the list for the previous three years; in 2014, Ontario was home to 915 new Olivias and 828 new Liams. Jackson, in all its spellings, was used 998 times.

William has been in the top 10 boys’ names in Ontario every year since 1917 “without fail,” Flanagan added. “That is the most consistent baby name in Ontario.”