Games of Thrones baby names growing on us: Wook at the wittle Khaleesi
You can't have baby dragons, but you can have a baby named after the Mother of Dragons.
The Mother of Dragons helped inspire some baby names.
The top baby names of 2018 as logged by the US Social Security Administration are now out. You won't find any geeky surprises on the top-10 lists, but the data on the rising popularity of names shows Game of Thrones and Star Wars fans are expressing their love of fantasy and sci-fi.
A future generation of George R.R. Martin readers came into the world in 2018 bearing names like Khaleesi (up from 631 in 2017 to 549 in the rankings) and Yara (up from 986 to 672).
Babies born in the US received "Ari," "Ariyah" and "Aria" as names, though it's hard to determine if those are Game of Thrones references. "Arya" ranked in the 119th spot for female names while "Aria" came in at 19th. Perhaps a lot of opera fans had babies last year.
Some characters didn't even crack the top 1,000. You won't find Cersei, Tyrion, Brienne, Sansa or Samwell on the list. Jon Snow isn't getting much love, either. The spelling "Jon" logged in at 754 for male names, while "John" ranked in the 27th spot.
On the Star Wars side of things, Kylo moved up from 1,152 in 2017 to 865 in 2018. Rey, however, still remains primarily a boy's name. It didn't even make the top-1,000 list for girls.
The No. 1 names in 2018 were Liam for boys and Emma for girls. While Khaleesi gained ground, "Daenerys" is conspicuously missing. Maybe because it's so hard to spell it right. We can blame George R.R. Martin for that one.
