Publications
Partners
- Choosing a fitting name for a newborn baby can be hard.
- People look for inspiration in films, books, movies and the names of friends and family.
- More parents are turning to AI for help.
- For more lifestyle news, go to the News24 Life front page.
Some people find names they would like to give their children long before they have conceived them. Others need help to pin down a name that feels like the right fit for the new human.
If you fall into the latter category, there are various sources of inspiration you can turn to, from films, books, movies, friends and family to the unending resource that is the World Wide Web.
The burgeoning AI sector has also entered the baby naming game, as evidenced by recent Google Trends data from the US.
According to Google Trends, "AI name generator" is the top trending baby name search term in 2023.
Interest in the search term has consistently grown since January 2023 with no signs of slowing down, indicating that more people are open to the idea of letting intelligence software name their child.
Some templates ask you to enter five names you like, five you don't, and the baby's gender to generate a list of names for you.
When people aren't letting software do all the work, they seek inspiration for "unisex baby names." The search term has spiked by more than 90% this year.
READ MORE | These are the most popular baby names in SA, Stats SA finds
Parents are also looking for baby names that mean love, as that search term has seen a more than 200% spike in 2023.
Trendy South African baby names
Locally, names like Melokuhle, Enzokuhle, Omphile and Amahle are trending for girls, and Lethabo, Melokuhle and Enzokuhle are popular among parents who give birth to boys. This is according to data from Outlier Africa and Statistics South Africa. Mama Magic SA designed a graphic showing the top five most popular baby names for boys and girls from 2017 to 2021.
If you're looking for inspiration, perhaps you can take a cue from the top most searched "meaning of…" baby names for 2023 in the United States. This includes names like Cheyenne, Astrid, Emma, Luke, Ava, Caleb, Nova, Michael and Theodore, to name a few.
The data also shows that parents wanted cute, unisex, popular and unique names, as these adjectives preceded the words "baby name" in their search terms.
Internet users also looked for names that mean "blessing," "gift from God" and "surprise."
