Top Latino baby names of 2012 announced
Close up shot of a beautiful three month old hispanic baby girl. Credit: iStock
BabyCenter en Español has announced the top 100 baby names for Latino parents in 2012: Sofía for girls and Santiago for boys have stayed in the top spot for the sixth consecutive year.
Making the girls list for the first time are María José and Jimena (Ximena), both names of players on the “Pequenos Gigantes” (Little Giants) Latino children's-talent reality show broadcast in the United States on Univision.
“One of the main reasons we think Sofia is such a popular name is that it’s a bilingual name – it is pronounced exactly the same in English and in Spanish,” says Isidra Mencos, editorial director of the BabyCenter en Español site. "We’ve noticed a very pronounced tendency to use bilingual names in U.S. Hispanics. It just makes the kids’ lives much easier.”
As for boys: “In terms of Santiago, it has a lot of resonance with Hispanics because it’s a religious name,” Mencos says. “For boys we tend to be very, very traditional. The boy tends to need to follow the name of the father and the grandfather. It just keeps repeating across generations.”
BabyCenter en Español’s list is drawn from more than 60,000 names of babies born in 2012 to mothers in the United States and Latin America who registered on BabyCenter en Español.
Here’s what the Baby Center en Español editors predict for Latino names in 2013: Parents will emulate several Brazilian supermodels who became mothers for the second time in 2012, choosing Noah (son of Alessandra Ambrosio), Sienna (daughter of Adriana Lima), and Vivian (daughter of Gisele Bündchen). They also expect the name Jenni (or Janney) will spike honoring the recently deceased Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera.
To see the full list and the hottest baby name trends, click here.
