If you’re struggling to find a name for your baby, you can get some ideas from a new list of popular names.
Statistics Canada released its annual top 20 list of baby names last week.
How 2023 list compares to 2022
From the 2023 list, the most popular name for boys and girls remained Noah and Olivia, respectively, according to the government agency’s Baby Names Observatory page online.
Liam was ranked second for boys in 2023, the same as in 2022. Emma also remained the second most popular name for girls.
Theodore replaced William in the third spot for boys. Meanwhile, the third spot for girls didn’t change with Charlotte.
Leo and Amelia stayed in the fourth spots.
William dropped down to fifth, while Sophia kept her position at No. 5.
Data collection
According to StatCan, the data comes from its Canadian Vital Statistics Birth database, which collects demographic information annually from provincial and territorial vital statistics registries on all live births in Canada, and Québec Pension Plan’s List of Baby Names in Quebec.
StatCan said fewer births and stillbirths may have been captured in the data because it took less time to collect information due to improvements in methodology and timeliness.
“Births from the most recent year are considered preliminary and previous data may have been revised,” it wrote on its website.
It said missing first names, those composed of a single letter and those with a frequency less than five are excluded.
Frequency refers to the number of times a first name was recorded for a baby during the year.