New boy name tops Nameberry's most popular baby names for 2017

In a stunning upset, the ancient boys' name Atticus has jumped to the top of the baby name popularity list for 2017.

Atticus is the No. 1 name for boys on Nameberry’s list of Most Popular Baby Names of 2017, with Olivia the top girls' name for the second year in a row.

While girl names conventionally move up and down the fashion ladder more quickly, this year’s Nameberry list is more volatile on the boys’ side, with more new entries in the count of Top 1000 baby names and more names making dramatic shifts up or down the ladder

That's evidence of a sea change in how parents choose names for their sons, moving away from family names and traditional male choices and judging boys' names the same way they do girls', with style the driving factor, says Nameberry’s cofounder Pamela Redmond Satran.

Nameberry’s popular names list measures which names attract the largest share of the site’s nearly 250 million page views, versus how many babies actually receive that name. It’s a gauge of parents’ interest in baby names, according to Satran, and a predictor of which names will become more popular in the future.

Three new names vaulted onto the top 10 this year for each gender: Cora, Maia and Amara for girls, and Theodore, Jasper and Henry for boys. Maia is the most surprising newcomer to the group, also new to the Nameberry Top 100 and among the US Top 1000 baby names for only a decade.

Here is the complete top 10 baby names for each gender.

Girls

Olivia
Cora*
Amelia
Charlotte
Isla
Isabella
Maia*
Aurora
Amara*
Ava

Boys

Atticus
Asher
Jack
Theodore*
Jasper*
Milo
Oliver
Silas
Henry*
Wyatt

*New in 2017

Names with ties to mythology, ancient cultures and classic literature, influences that topped our baby name trend predictions for 2017, dominate Nameberry’s popular names list.

Atticus qualifies on two counts. It’s the name of a Roman literary figure as well as the first name of the hero of Harper Lee’s beloved novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird."

No. 2 girl name Cora has mythological roots -- it’s another name for Persephone, goddess of fertility and the underworld -- and is also the first name of the heroine of the classic American novel "The Last of the Mohicans." Maia is the Greek mother of Hermes and the Roman goddess of spring. Rumi is the name of an ancient Muslim (male) poet and Phoebe is another name for the goddess of the moon and also figures in the New Testament, Shakespeare and "Catcher in the Rye."

On the boys’ side, Silas relates to the Roman god of trees, Augustus is the name of a Roman emperor, and Magnus is a royal appellation meaning “greatest.” Caspian is a name from "The Chronicles of Narnia" and Dante was a medieval poet.

Other mythological and literary names on the rise include Ophelia, Freya and Esme for girls; Cassius, Axel and Felix for boys.

With 5 million monthly visitors from around the globe, Nameberry is the world’s largest baby name site.