Noah and Emma are extremely popular names for newborns.
Every year around Mother’s Day, the Social Security Administration publishes statistics on the popularity of baby names for the previous year, based on their comprehensive records of births in the US.
We took a look at how the popularity of the 10 most common boys and girls names in 2016 has changed over the last decade.
For boys, the most common name, Noah, has steadily gained in popularity since 2007, while the second-most popular name, Liam, has had a much sharper rise from just the 89th most popular name in that year. The rest of the top ten are all fairly close to each other:
Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from SSA
Emma was the most popular name for baby girls for the third year in a row, although its frequency has been slowly declining and it maintains only a narrow lead over second-place Olivia. The fifth most popular name, Isabella, dominated in 2009 and 2010, around the same time as the peak popularity of the Twilight series and its protagonist Bella Swan.