Olivia, Ethan top Iowa baby names for 2009

DES MOINES – Seraphina, Castiel and Everleigh may be names catching on among trend setters, but Iowa parents are sticking with more neo-traditional appellations like Olivia, Ava, Ethan and Jacob when naming their babies.

Olivia ranked as the top choice of Iowa parents when naming their baby girls last year -- replacing Emma -- while Ethan held the No. 1 ranking among names chosen for new-born boys for the fifth straight year in Iowa, according to data compiled by the state Department of Public Health.

While the orders shuffled a little, nine of the most-popular baby names for both girls and boys were repeats from the 2008 list and seven of Iowa's most-popular names for baby girls also showed up on the Social Security Administration's national list for 2009 while only four boys' names appeared both on the Iowa and national lists.

That was not surprising to Pamela Redmond Satran, a co-author of baby-naming books with Linda Rosenkrantz at nameberry.com, although she said she didn't expect Olivia to top Iowa's list. Nationally, Isabella was the No. 1 choice for female names in 2009 while Jacob topped the boys' rankings.

“There are national trends. We all watch the same cable TV and we all Google, we're all online at the same sites, we all shop at Wal-mart and I think there is kind of a national access to the same pop cultural influences and the same tastes and the same products, whereas maybe even 20 or 30 years ago the country was less homogenous,” she said.

“It really is a distinction for a name to be No. 1,” Satran added. “Not many names have achieved that and once they get up there, they tend to stay up there. There are a lot of parents who say they don't want to pick the name that everybody else is using, but in the end a lot of people do pick those same names and do like the same names.”

Popularity wasn't a consideration when Dawn and Ryan Ovel, of Cedar Rapids, named their daughter Olivia Kathryn after she was born in March 2009. But it was when they named their older daughter Emma.

“I knew Emma was No. 1, but I didn't know Olivia was,” said Ovel, who noted that doing the popular thing is so not her. That created some angst when she and her husband went back and forth before agreeing on Emma.

“I said, Ryan, I can't do it, it's so popular, and he said but it's the only one we like,” Ovel said. “She was nameless for half the day because I didn't want to do it.”

Laura Wattenberg from babynamewizard.com said naming a baby is serious business these days compared to bygone days when children more commonly bore family or biblical names or were tagged John or Mary or George or Martha.

“I think there's more anxiety today about baby names than ever before because parents are putting pressure on themselves to be creative,” Wattenberg said. “What you really see in your area is a kind of neo-traditionalism where people like names that have roots but still sound fresh because they weren't used much in our generation or our parents' generation.”

Brenda Gifford, 35, of Cedar Rapids, said her 13-month-old daughter was named Olivia Isabella because her older daughter, Emily (another perennially popular name) picked it out.

“We wanted all three of us to agree on a name, and she came up with it,” Gifford said. “We both liked it so that's what we went with.”

Not only are baby names serious business, they're big business given the plethora of Web sites, books and other publications devoted to selecting surnames or understanding their meanings, Satran said.

“We've become a much more brand conscious country. I think people are much more aware of the image that a name creates,” she said. “When you come down to it, a name is (a) basically the only thing you can control about your kid and (b) it's free. So why wouldn't it be something that you put a lot of time and effort into it, and it's fun looking for the perfect name.”

(Kate Stinson contributed to this story)

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Most-popular baby names selected by Iowa parents in 2009

Girls

Olivia (218), Ava (217), Emma (204), Isabella (177), Addison (171), Ella (165), Sophia (160), Chloe (139), Madison (136), Grace (131).

Boys

Ethan (210), Jacob (206), Carter (196), Noah (185), William (181), Owen (176), Jackson (174), Logan (171), Gavin (169), Mason (168).

Source: Iowa Department of Public Health