Parents choosing to give their baby girls a boy's name is already a thing and now giving baby boys a girl's name is expected to be a huge baby trend in 2024, but is it something you'd consider?
There's a huge amount of pressure when it comes to naming your baby, whether you want a celebrity-inspired baby name or would rather pick one of the 10 most popular baby names of the last decade. You've got the anxiety of wondering whether they will grow up to like it or there's even a risk of falling out of love with the name yourself like these celebrities who changed their baby's names. After all, you wouldn't want to pick one of these stressful baby names and live to regret it.
Well, there's a new trend on the horizon for 2024, and while unisex baby names have been popular for a while, there's expected to be a rise in the number of parents picking girls names for their baby boys. Experts at Nameberry have predicted a rise in baby boys being given names that would usually be seen as "girl" names. This could result in the rise of names such as Cleo, Fern, Hazel, June and Willow potentially getting more registrations for boys throughout this year. In BabyCentre's data for the most popular names of 2023, Willow earned a spot in the top 10 for girls, while Hazel was 69th.
GoodtoKnow editor Anna Bailey chose the typical boy's name Freddie for her 15-month-old daughter and she explains where the inspiration came from: "My daughter is named Freddie, and we love it. Her name was inspired by Freddie Mercury, as my husband is a huge fan of Queen. He suggested it as a bit of a joke at first when I was pregnant and then it just stuck. I love that's it so cool and unique as a girl's name – and she'll stand out in the crowd. It can be a bit confusing when my mum posts about Freddie on Facebook and her friends say, 'he's cute' – older people just can't seem to get their head around it, but it makes me laugh. I'm sure as she grows up, people will be much more accepting of the fact people are choosing boys' names for girls."
While it's considered too early for the trend of choosing girls' names for boys to catch on (as none of the names currently feature in the top 100 for boys), BabyCentre did report that registrations of boys named Sage "doubled" in 2023, while there was also a "huge rise in popularity" for boys named Willow, suggesting there could be some truth to the trend prediction and, who knows, maybe 2024 is the year that you choose an adorable gender-neutral baby name for your little one?
In other family news, this baby name meaning 'delicate' could be set to rise in popularity this year and the rising baby names for 2024 that experts 'never saw coming' have been revealed - would you choose them?
