In my last post I showed three of the top boys names for babies in 2025. Today I’ll discuss the top three baby girls’ names for 2025 in order from first to third: Olivia, Amelia, and Charlotte. See the graphic.

Much like the boys’ names, these show two names that only became popular in recent decades and one (Charlotte) that may be considered old-fashioned but with a recent resurgence. Remember, these are not to scale, so the true top of Amelia’s scale should be slightly below Olivia’s if they were on the same scale. The relevant points are that although Olivia is still number one, it is declining, while the other two are gaining or at least at the top of their popularity. Why?

Gemini attributes Olivia’s popularity to a combination of media figures or characters including Olivia Newton-John (too early IMHO), Olivia Kendall (The Cosby Show) and on two daytime soap operas. Maybe, but I’m not convinced, and in any event, those don’t explain the decline. It attributes Amelia to America following the British trend where it was number one in 2011, but especially when the Dr. Who character Amelia “Amy” Pond was introduced in 2010. I don’t trust AI in general, but I can’t disprove these. I do note that there are many other popular Amelias like Amelia Bedelia of children’s lit and Amelia Bones in the Harry Potter series.

Sticking with Gemini for now, it says Charlotte’s gradual rise is not due to a recent pop culture cause, but is rather consistent with a 100-year cycle, reportedly a common phenomenon. It says names become stale “grandma” names after awhile and decline until 100 years later, more or less, then become trendy “vintage” names. It also attributes it in part to the general trend of this century using girl’s names that can double as tomboy names, like Charlie in this case. Copilot (another AI) attributes these changes more to saturation (Olivia now being oversaturated, and the other two not yet saturated). I buy that as I know my own kids didn’t want to name their kids anything that seemed to common. I’m just having fun speculating. This may all be BS.