A new baby name trend is taking experts by surprise.
Parents face many difficult decisions throughout their child’s life, but one of the first ones is choosing what to name their baby. There are countless monikers to choose from, so it’s no wonder that new parents can find themselves swayed by current trends every year as the most popular names continue to change.
Those who are really struggling with finding the perfect name might consult a baby name expert for some suggestions, and one such expert has now revealed what most new parents are looking for in 2025. Morgan Kline, a baby name consultant from the US, has said she’s had several clients come to her asking for the same thing – and it’s a trend she never saw coming.
Morgan explained that the emerging trend specifically concerns baby boys and is all about “rare” names that are still fairly traditional. She said this means parents are looking for a name that doesn’t feature in the top 50 names in the country but isn’t so out there that their child might get rude comments about their moniker.
She said: “The most surprising baby name trend I’ve seen come out of 2025 so far is what I’m calling rare but mainstream baby boy names. I’ve only seen this with boys, but they are parents who want a very normal, very kind of ‘plain’ name, but they still want it to be rare.
“They’re coming to me saying they like names like James, Lucas, Michael, and Daniel, and they want that vibe, but they just don’t want names that are in the top 50 or top 100.”
Morgan went on to say that because she’s been seeing this so often with her clients, she’s decided to put a list together so that she can refer to it when making consultations with parents who are looking for these types of names.
On her list were names like Austin, Adam, Emmett, Vincent, Calvin, Dean, Elliot, Tyler, Justin, Peter, Joel, Edward, Oscar, Brandon, Patrick, Grant, Stephen, Cody, Reid, Spencer, Edwin, Colin, Conrad, Sean, Corey, and Chandler.
She explained these names were all taken from outside the top 100 baby boy names in the US. For example, Austin was the most popular name on her list and was used 3,475 times in 2024. The most popular boys’ name in the US is Liam, and that was used 20,802 times – so Austin is significantly less popular.
In the UK, the top five most popular boys’ names in 2024 were Muhammad, Noah, Oliver, George, and Leo. Many of Morgan’s names would also work for UK parents looking for names that rank outside of the top 50. However, if that’s your criteria, there are some names on her list you should avoid. Oscar is actually the 9th most popular name for boys in the UK, while Edward is 30th and Adam is 41st.
Concluding her video, Morgan stated: “When I started doing consultations, everyone was looking for that one-of-a-kind, razzle-dazzle, wow factor baby name. I’m still getting a lot of those for girls, but I noticed this shift started last year, where a lot of people wanted very normal but less common boy names. It’s interesting to see how things change.”
For relatable parenting tales, tips and offers to help you and your family, sign up for our free Lemon-Aid newsletter here.
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.