From pot plants taking over millennial homes to featuring on desks in classrooms, it seems everyone’s obsessed with #plantlife; including new parents, who are increasingly using botanical-themed names for their children.
And no, we’re not just talking about Gwyneth and Apple.
According to a report from trend analysts McCrindle, in the top 100 names given to babies in Australia for 2019, three out of five of the most popular girls’ names were nature-inspired.
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The report predicts, for example, that Jasmine, Olive, Ivy and Willow are set to surge in popularity in the next year.
Once the preserve (pun intended) of celebrities, it seems more parents are willing to go out on a limb (ahem) to make not only their homes, but also their families, ‘green’.
“Of the top five girls’ names that most significantly increased in popularity in the 2010s, three had a botanical theme,” Ashley Fell, Social Researcher at McCrindle, told Mamamia.
“In contrast, no top 100 boys’ names have botanic influences.”
Fell explained the reasoning behind the findings.
“The parents of our emerging generation today, our Generation Alphas – the label given to the generation under 10 – are ‘the Millennials’ or the Gen Y’s (those aged between 25 and 39).
Top Comments
I would hazard a guess that this is less to do with being environmental, and more to do with the normal life cycle of names - people tend to recycle names that are from 3-4 generations ago (ie we use the names of our grandparents and great-grandparents). If it were because millennial parents feel connected to the earth, there would be a lot more nature-inspired boys running around!
Apple and Buttercup might be newer, but a lot of these names have been around for ages.