Everybody wants their baby’s name to have a unique spelling.
Giving your kid a different spelling of a name is nothing new, just look at the Kardashians. But UK site Babycentre has announced the most popular names for the first half of 2018 and there’s a spike in unusual spellings recently, especially ones using the letters X, Y, and Z.
At the top of the list are familiar names - Olivia, Sophia, and Amelia for girls, Muhammad, Oliver, and Noah for boys. But when you get further down the list, some of the more unique spellings are outside the top 20. Babycentre has at least six different spellings for the name Jackson: Jacson, Jakson, Jaxson, Jaxen, Jaxon. And this year, the spelling Jaxon has taken the lead over the classic spelling, Jackson for the first time.
Associate Babycentre editor Lorna Marsh thinks the “weird and wonderful” spellings surge could be from parents “rebelling” and “shaking up the status quo while still playing it relatively safe” with their kids’ names. She points out that a lot of the unusual spellings involve adding an X, Y, or Z to a classic name. Examples include: Kaylub, Liyam, Fyn, Jayson, Zayden, Roze, Wynter, Izzac, and Madyson.
And now that this X, Y, Z trend has caught on so much, we’ll have to ask a kid how to spell their name. Even if it’s Isabella, because you never know if that’s Izabella, Isabella, or even Izabelyha. For real.
Source: MamaMia