Baby names is a part of life that will never stop changing. They're incredibly susceptible to trends and fashions and in the late 1800s surveys were carried out to document what the most popular names of the decade were. Now that there has been 12 decades in between we can take inspiration from our ancestors and choose a name for our baby that is traditional, beautiful and unusual with ease.

111 years ago in 1890 new parents chose names such as John, Mary, Elizabeth and George for their babies. See a pattern here? That's right, they're all names that we saw in Royalty. Frank and Ethel were popular too though, as was Rose and Ida. These names seem old fashioned now, but since names like Albert and Martha are rising in popularity at the moment, perhaps we'll see a resurgence.

Thirty years on in 1920, John and Mary are still the most popular baby names in the US. However, names like Dorothy and Ruth have emerged. Robert and James are soaring to the top of fashion too, which is incredible as James is still very popular today, some 89 years later!

By the end of World War II baby names were recorded much more closely and girls names like Cynthia, Judith and Sharon had appeared. Boys names were getting more imaginative too, with Gary, Patrick and Raymond coming into the mix. Some of your uncles or even grandparents might have names like Timothy, Louis, Connie and Helen that you'd like to keep in the family. 'Older' sounding names like Phyllis and Walter were still very popular at this time.

It wasn't until the 1980s that the children of the 60s started naming their children slightly more abstractly. In this decade we see names like Crystal, Misty and Amber for girls. There are still plenty of traditional names at this time, however, with 'Michael' pipping Daniel and Joshua to the top spot. Aaron, Jessica, Erin and Ryan also became popular in the 80s.

So where are we today? Well, in 2001 the two most popular baby names were Emily and Jacob. We're sure you'll agree that they're nice, but what about the more strange, yet commonly chosen names of that year? Logan became very popular for boys, as did Hunter and Devin. We also see the slightly more Biblically inspired boy's names such as Isaiah and Nathaniel creeping in. For girls, parents were favoring alternative spellings to older names such as Kaylee, Makayla and Mya. Skylar and Savannah are two girl's names that are unusual, yet became very fashionable.

Now we come to 2007; the year when Sienna and Lila became popular for girls and Cody, Jeremiah and Colton were trendy for boys. Robert is said to be one of the most unpopular of the boys names, with Aiden at the top. Rebecca is just as unpopular as Robert and is being beaten by Sophia. With all that in mind, will you go for a traditional older name, follow the trends with a great sounding popular name of 'now' or go your own way, create your own name, change the spelling of another or choose a name that's never entered the popular lists at all? Oh, the choices!

Stan Tian

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