Baby names are endlessly fascinating because they’re so subjective. Some names are more popular than others – and some are falling out of fashion – but ultimately it comes down to personal choice. The best baby name is the one that feels right to you.
Still, it’s definitely interesting to dig into a new list claiming to reveal the most scientifically beautiful baby names. That’s right – scientifically beautiful. The list was created by My 1st Years with input from a linguistics expert: Dr. Bodo Winter, Associate Professor of Cognitive Linguistics at the University of Birmingham.
Dr. Winter’s approach was rooted in sound symbolism: the connection between a word’s sound and its meaning. Because some words sound better than others to the human ear, they’re more likely to inspire positive feelings when we hear them.
“Using an exciting piece of sound symbolism research from Adelman et al. (2018) as a starting point, we scored a number of the world’s most popular baby names in order to rank them,” Dr. Winter explained. “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.”
Both Olivia and Noah – the most popular baby names in England and Wales statistically – feature in the list, but you can check out the full top 100 below.
The most scientifically beautiful girls’ names:
Sophia
Zoe
Everly
Sophie
Riley
Ivy
Paisley
Willow
Ellie
Emily
Evelyn
Eva
Elena
Chloe
Nova
Penelope
Lucy
Lily
Olivia
Naomi
Emma
Natalie
Sofia
Eleanor
Violet
Bella
Luna
Ella
Victoria
Isabella
Maya
Natalia
Amelia
Savannah
Charlotte
Stella
Hazel
Athena
Maria
Autumn
Kennedy
Aurora
Alice
Aria
Harper
Serenity
Nora
Grace
Elizabeth
Hannah
The most scientifically beautiful boys’ names:
Matthew
Julian
William
Isaiah
Leo
Levi
Joseph
Theo
Isaac
Samuel
Miles
James
Elijah
Luke
Noah
Santiago
Owen
Logan
Liam
Roman
Ryan
Cooper
Jack
Maverick
Anthony
Ezekiel
Carter
Benjamin
Lucas
Henry
Jacob
Lincoln
Mason
Nathan
Asher
Jackson
Andrew
Cameron
Alexander
Theodore
Adam
Gabriel
Kingston
Daniel
David
Hunter
Dylan
Muhammad
Sebastian
Adrian
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