some Canadian popular names

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

Canada doesn't have official country-wide statistics for baby names. Some provinces keep statistics, but they do it differently (some like Alberta release data for every single name, even the ones only given to one baby; others like BC only release data for names given to 5 or more babies; etc).

Today's Parent (a magazine) has tried to amalgamate the lists. They're interesting to compare to the much more well known (even among Canadians!) SSA government lists.

You can look at the lists yourself, but here are a few names that stood out to me (mostly either "surprised it's that high" or "surprised it's not higher", with a few French names included for their novelty to Anglophones like myself), with their number in the print copy I have of Today's Parent Pregnancy. The number in parenthesis after is the number in the SSA rankings.

BOYS:
4. Nathan (28)
31. Felix (311)
47. Mathias/Mathis (693)
52. Raphael (669)
56. John (27)
58. Emile
68. Loic
79. Simon (256)
87. Etienne
96. Malik (322)
99. Henry (57)

GIRLS:
36. Alice (142)
41. Florence
45. Maelie
49. Rosalie (548)
59. Noemie
61. Oceane
62. Coralie
65. Beatrice (707)
69. Eve (549)
75. Isla (268)
82. Daphne (450)
98. Maude

Overall, the Canadian top 100 is more to my taste than the American...

Edit: You should really check out the lists for Nunavut, Yukon and Northwest Territories. Because the populations are so tiny (all sub 40k people), this is more like the popularity list of a large town. The Yukon list, surprisingly, seems entirely typical of the rest of Canada, but the NWT list has some curveballs (#1 boys name = Hunter, #12 girls name = Trinity). It's the Nunavut list that is the most interesting. It contains the Inuit names Pauloosie and Joanasie (m), and Napatchie (f). Other than the Inuit names and the #20 name Junior, the male list isn't that atypical, but the female list is a particularly fascinating mix: names that sound like my mom's generation (Joyce, Mary, Denise, Trudy), names that sound like my generation (Jenna, Kimberley, Rachel, Andrea, Ashley), and names that sound new generation (Eva, Zoey, Malaya). (Maybe Malaya is also Inuit? Most Google results are obviously about the Malay peninsula. It has a pretty sound, regardless.)

Comments

[magpiefirefly.livejournal.com]

I've only known one Florence, my aunt, who was from Canada. I'm surprised it is ranked at all.

[melly-issa.livejournal.com]

It looks like Nova Scotia must let you go home without naming the baby - "baby" is #13 for girls and #16 for boys there!

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

I feel like any combined list like that is slightly misleading, because some of the names that are extremely popular in Quebec are virtually unheard of in the rest of Canada.

It's interesting to look at the differences between the provinces and speculate.