With half of 2015 almost over, Baby Center is calling it early. The year 2015 is the year for "gender-neutral" names, the site declared.
While tradition dictates that the list of popular baby names is usually tallied at the end or the beginning of the year, Baby Center said that experts have already seen the hottest trend, thanks largely to a cultural shift in the last few months.
"Millennials are an open-minded and accepting group, and they don't want their children to feel pressured to conform to stereotypes that might be restrictive. Just as companies have started making more neutral kids' clothes, and taking 'boy' and 'girl' labels off toys, an increasing number of parents are choosing unisex names," said Linda Murray, the Global Editor-in-Chief for Babycenter.
Leading the list of unisex baby names is Amari, which rose in popularity for girls (56 percent) and boys (22 percent) compared to last year, according to Yahoo Parenting. Other favored names on the list include Brooklyn, Harper, Avery, Phoenix, Easton, Blake, Rowan, Owen, London, Alex, Ryan, Reagan, River, Sydney, Bailey, Kennedy, Peyton, Karter, Quinn, Reese, Rory, Sawyer and Taylor.
Celebrity parents have been going with the trend for the last few years, as they consciously choose gender-neutral names for their children. There's Wyatt for Aston Kutcher and Mila Kunis' daughter, born in 2014, or Lincoln for Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell's daughter, born in 2013. According to Huffington Post, Wyatt and Lincoln are usually in the Top 100 favorite names for boys, but these celebrities are showing that the names could also work for girls.
Unisex names, however, first saw its rise in the '60s, during the birth of feminism and liberal ideas, according to baby naming expert Pamela Satran via Yahoo Parenting. "And in the 1980s, the first generation of working mothers and parents focused on professional equality picked upwardly mobile, gender-neutral names such as Courtney and Morgan, often for their daughters, while boys' gender-neutral names went in the new 'cowboy' direction with Casey, Corey, and Jesse."
People from the older generation have this notion that the name of the child should immediately indicate his or her gender. But Satran stressed that situation today is slightly different as the use of gender-neutral names "has to do more with an ideal of transcending gender stereotypes for children of both sexes," she added in her interview with Yahoo Parenting.
It remains to be seen whether this will still be the trend by the end of the year.
