Babies much the same, but popular names change every year

Baby names from Hollywood stars and other famous folk never cease to amaze: Moxie CrimeFighter. Camera. Kyd.

Ahem.

Sometimes the rest of us regular Joes, however, can be pretty fascinating, too, when labeling our offspring.

BabyCenter recently released its top 100 baby names of 2008 based on "hundreds of thousands of parents who shared their baby's name with us in 2008."

Emma took the No. 1 slot for girls on the popular parenting Web site, while Aiden did the job for boys, followed by similar-sounding Jayden in the No. 2 spot, and Caden creeping in as No. 5.

Though the Aiden-Jayden-Caden trend has grown strong in recent years, other lists, such as the U.S. Social Security Administration, don't show the names to be quite as popular. Aiden has yet to crack the top 25 in names reported to the Social Security peeps; Caden hit its high in 2006 with a rank of 91; Jayden made it to 18 in 2007 for boys and was also ranked 172 for girls.

Sarah Jackson 425-339-3037 sjackson@heraldnet.com

What's in a name

Here are the top baby names of 2008 among name-reporting parents at BabyCenter.com.

1 Emma

2 Sophia

3 Madison

4 Isabella

5 Olivia

6 Ava

7 Madeline

8 Addison

9 Hailey

10 Lily



1 Aiden

2 Jayden

3 Ethan

4 Jacob

5 Caden

6 Jackson

7 Noah

8 Jack

9 Logan

10 Matthew