Millennials Are Giving Their Babies Social Media-inspired Names Now

baby names instagram

Nothing will stop people of the Millennial generation from doing what they want to do including giving their children names plucked out of social media.

Baby Center compiled its annual list of baby names for 2015 and the results showed that Empire characters, Instagram filters, YouTube stars, teen fiction, video game heroines, royalty,  names of space and planets and even vices like names of booze, drugs, gambling, and guns, were all on the rise!

After analyzing 340,000 names of babies born in 2015, the popular parenting website found names of Empire characters surge or make a comeback.

Dre was up 77%, Lyon grew 6% and Hakeem was up 55%. The name Lucious returned to the list for the first time in three years.

Instagram

Hard to believe but Instagram filter-inspired baby names started gaining popularity in 2015: Lux (up 75% since 2014), Ludwig (up 42%) and Amaro (up 26%) for boys, and Valencia (up 26%) and Juno (up 30%) for girls.

Whoa! At least no Xpro-II yet.

“They’re looking for something unique, but not unheard of,” BabyCenter’s global Editor-in-Chief Linda Murray told Today , also explaining that, “You take these precious moments in your life and [a filter] makes them even more beautiful, it enhances them. I think people have just really warm feelings about that and these names come into their consciousness.”

Space

Parents also looked to the stars and space for names: Venus is up 68%, Jupiter is up 50%, Sunny is up 43% for boys and 18% for girls. Soleil (French for Sun) climbed 28%, Moon rose 4% and Luna and Stella took off.

Royals

Royalty-inspired names also saw an uptick. So there were more:  Royalty (up 88 %) , Royal (up 14%), Duchess (up 75%), Princess (up 22%), and Regina (Italian and Latin for queen) rose 5 percent.

For boys Regal names exerted power over baby boy names as Royal was up 36% and Reign up 54% t after Kourtney Kardashian named her son that last year. Prince was up 10%, King (up 8%), Noble and Sovereign (both up 7%). Sultan, Cesar, Kaiser and Emperor also increased.

Video Game 

Popular again were names from video games characters: Joule (ReCore), Meryl (Metal Gear Solid) Helena,  (Dead or Alive, Gears of War) Rayne (BloodRayne)  Jade (Beyond Good & Evil) gained 19 percent, Joanna (Perfect Dark)  Jill (Resident Evil)  all rose.

Vice Squad

Want beer or money? Name your baby that. Cash climbed as a name for boys (11%) and girls(46%). Beer names like Bud (up 69%) , Colt (up 12%), Miller (up 15%) jumped too.

Continue to read the top 10 boy and girl names HERE!