The top 10 baby names parents regret the most revealed
An online baby name guru shared the top surprisingly common names parents give to their children — but later regret, perhaps over simple spelling errors.
Baby name consultant Stephanie Coffield, who’s racked up nearly 200,000 followers on TikTok giving baby-naming advice to expecting parents, revealed a list of the top 10 given names that were later changed, provided by the Social Security Administration to the Washington Post earlier this year.
The list, showing the most changed names from 2017 to 2022, was topped by “Issac” and “Chole” — misspellings of the common names “Isaac” and “Chloe.”
The two mistakes were followed in order by Aiden, Conner — which is more commonly spelled “Connor” — Elliot, Michael, James, Isabella, Sophia and David.
“There’s nothing really uncommon that was a name change,” Coffield noted.
“Let this be a lesson to look up your child’s name ahead of time,” Coffield said in the video.
She also shared the list of the top 10 names people chose as their new names.
Unsurprisingly, the top names on that list were the correct spellings of Isaac and Chloe at No. 1 and No. 2, followed by Sebastian, William, Olivia, Michael, Elijah, Matthew, Connor and Jonathan.
“This seems like just a case of names that were already commonly given to children so of course they’re high on the regret list,” Coffield said.
Michael — among one of the most popular US names — was interestingly a top name on both lists, meaning it’s both one of the top ditched names and the top adopted names.
According to the Washington Post, the third most-changed and third most-adopted names suggest that people are changing their names from those that are declining in popularity, such as Aiden, to those on the rise, like Sebastian.
Social media users were shocked to learn of the misspelled names from Coffield’s video.
“Wait do nurses not like double check the spelling …? ‘Ma’am are you sure you want to spell ‘Chloe’ like that?’” one user commented.
“My nephew’s name was spelled Issac instead of Isaac we couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not,” another wrote.
“See this is why all my kids will have basic boring names, because I can’t spell so it’ll have to be an easy name,” another said.
According to the Social Security Administration, the top baby names for boys in 2021 were, in order, Liam, Noah, Oliver, Elijah, James, William, Benjamin, Lucas, Henry and Theodore. The top names for girls were Olivia, Emma, Charlotte, Amelia, Ava, Sophia, Isabella, Mia, Evelyn and Harper.
Earlier this year, researchers at family genealogy company FindMyPast hypothesized a resurgence of 1920s-era baby names — and their predictions were eerily correct.