This Camp Counselor Shared The Top 10 Tween Girl Names She Heard This Summer
There’s a pretty good chance your 10- to 12-year-old might have one of these names.
Parents have often found the task of naming a child all too overwhelming. It is, after all, the label they’re defined by for their entire life. No pressure, right? You don’t want something too common, too obscure, or too hard to pronounce of spell. And let’s be real, someone will always have something to say about a baby name.
Though it’s hard to guess the future commonality of a name, one all-girls camp counselor dished on some of the most popular names she heard this summer, and tips on how to avoid your child sharing the same name as 10 of her bunkmates.
“I worked at an all-girls summer camp this summer, and these are the top 10 names of girls basically between the ages of 10 and 12,” Yaya Kampen begins.
Kampen explains that she enjoys name culture, but most name culture centers around newborns, and she believes that most parents are on a more common train of thought than we think — and her campers’ names prove that theory.
“So, by the time your kid hits kindergarten or hits summer camp, there’s like 10 of the same kid and I think this is exactly what happened with these, like, unique names, but there ends up being like 15 of them at the same summer camp.”
She then lists the top 10 most common names she heard at camp this summer, including some that are surprising and others that make complete sense.
“Coming in at number 10 is Charlotte or any nickname iteration of that Charlie, Lottie, Shar, etc.,” she says. “For nine is Lily — Lily, Liliana, Lilian — lots of Lilys.”
Eighth on the list was Mackenzie, then Isabelle or Isabella, followed by Claire or Clara.
The top five included Audrey or Aubrey, or versions of Elle like Ella, Ellen, and Ellie. Number three is Madison, Madeline, Maddie, Madds. Second on the list was Emma, but short for Emerson.
“So, we literally had 14 girls whose names were Emerson and they were called Emma. I’m positive that one was on a blog like 12 years ago about, like, ‘cool new names for your little girls’ and it was, like, Emerson, and all of the women chose Emerson,” she joked.
The number one spot went to the name Zoey, “spelled a lot of different ways, but Zoey or Zo, we had 18 Zoey or Zos this summer.”
For parents looking to try and avoid their child being one of 18 Zoeys at summer camp, Kampen has a piece of advice: Take a look at the census.
“So, whenever the Social Security Department releases the names of all the people who were born that year, if I have a name that I’ve loved for a long time that really has been unique, but is now peaking in popularity on the name list from the year prior, then I take it off,” she explains, confessing she sadly had to nix Nova from her baby name list.
In a follow-up video, Kampen gave some more out-of-the-box names that she loved, including Hildegard, Dottie, and Louella. She also listed off names like Madelief, November, Osabella, Pippa, Lake, and Ziggy.
