These are the German baby name trends for 2023

With some first names you can only shake your head and inevitably have to ask yourself: What were the parents thinking when they called their baby that? Pipistrella, Tuesday, Arkenbald or Faustina, for example... just to name a few. Yes, these names were actually approved by the registry office, as reported by the Berlin city magazine "Qiez".

Such curious name creations are the exception rather than the rule. Much more often, parents tend to name their offspring the same as many other girls and boys in their age group. The amateur first name analyst Knud Bielefeld researches these trends. He also runs the website "Beliebte-vornamen.de" and makes a forecast there of which first names could be given particularly frequently in the following year.

But before we tell you which names will soon be heard particularly often in schoolyards, we have one more question for you:

Compared to the previous year, the first names Leni and Lina in particular can gain in popularity. The once-popular girl name Hannah, on the other hand, has fallen out of the top ten. In the next ten years there will probably be a lot of Mias, Emmas and Ellas in the state's school classes if the projection from Bielefeld is correct.

According to Bielefeld's forecast, Theo and Liam are rising names for newborn boys. Theo moves up from ninth to third place. In addition, the first names Noah, Finn and Matteo are still a common choice among expectant parents. The loser among boys' names, on the other hand, is Paul. He is no longer among the ten most popular first names for 2023.

For his prognosis, the name analyst Bielefeld uses the data from the birth registrations of the registry offices as well as baby galleries from maternity clinics that are published on the Internet. In order to determine the trends for 2023, the hobby name researcher evaluated the data from the years 2020, 2021 and the current year 2022.

Using this data, he then creates a time series for the respective first names and calculates a linear trend. Bielefeld also found that the currently particularly popular first names have two things in common, as the name expert explained to the news portal “t-online”.

In addition to the fact that most newborn names in recent years have been relatively short and in most cases consist of two syllables, many begin with the voiced consonants L, M and N. Many names even consist of only one, two or all three of these consonants, which are supplemented with as many vowels as possible. "Malea, Milea, Milena - there is hardly a combination of letters that has not yet made it onto the list of names," Bielefeld told "t-online".

As a second trend, first names would emerge that contain a so-called hiatus. Linguists understand the term to mean two consecutive vowels belonging to different syllables. Examples are names like Mia or Noah. According to Bielefeld, first names that neither begin with an L, M or N nor contain a hiatus are rarely among the top 500 most popular first names.

This preference of young parents for certain vowel sequences and consonants could also explain why some first names are becoming increasingly rare in Germany: