By Elizabeth Gordon-Hancock
Parents in and around Bluffton followed some of the national trends in baby naming last year, by favoring Amelia for a girl, and Grayson and Mason for a boy.

Here are Bluffton area's top baby names of 2017, based off of the names provided to the Bluffton Icon:

Top Girl Names of 2017 - born at Bluffton Hospital:
(All of these names appeared more than twice.)
1 - Addelyn
2 - Amelia
3 - Aubrey
4 - Avery
5 - Charlotte
6 - Natalie

Top Boy Names of 2017 - born at Bluffton Hospital:
(All these names appeared more than twice.)
1 - Cooper
2 - William
3 - Ezekiel
4 - Gavin
5 - Grayson
6 - Mason

The gender split between boys and girls born in Bluffton was roughly equal last year. (The boys have a one percent margin on the girls.)

Based on the names made available to the Bluffton Icon, Amelia was the second most popular name of girls born in Bluffton Hospital last year.

Amelia was the 10th most popular name in the United States last year, according to BabyCenter. Other names that featured in Bluffton's list that are also in the nation's top 10 for girls are:
• Olivia,
• Emma,
• Isabella,
• Mia, and
• Aria.

Baby boy names Grayson and Mason were also in both the national and Bluffton's top ten list for 2017. According to BabyCenter, Grayson is seventh and Mason is eighth most popular nationally.

According to BabyCenter, the most popular baby names in America in 2017 were Sophia and Jackson.

There were two Jackson's born at Bluffton Hospital this past year.  But Jackson was not in the top 10 names of Bluffton area parents.

The names chosen showed diversity in both origin, meaning and variation in spelling.

The top girl name Addelyn (in its various spellings) is considered a version of Adele and has both Hebrew and Germanic roots. Adele/Addelyn means ornament or brightness (according to the Hebrew origins) and noble or honorable (German).

The top boy name, Cooper, is from the Old English, and means someone who fixes barrels. The name refers to the Old English occupation, much like Smith and Miller refer to a bygone profession.

The names Thatcher, Tanner and Piper are another example, which are now used as first names. All three names were used at Bluffton Hospital in 2017.

Names beginning with A and C were most popular. But there were no babies with names beginning with F, Y and U (but that means both Q and Z were used).

The most popular middle names of last year were James and Michael for a boy, and Marie and Ann for a girl.

Having a middle name is more popular than not. Eight percent of babies in Bluffton were given more than one middle name (most of them girls). But only four percent of parents chose to not give their baby a middle name, and over half of those babies were boys.

Baby name trends can be a little hard to follow, as information around baby's births and personal details can be difficult to acquire.

Traditionally, baby name websites gained their information from previous national censuses, which are public domain.

For example, the U.S. Social Security Administration website publishes a list of the most popular baby names in America every year. But to date, they have yet to even publish the top 100 names of 2017.

However, thanks to modern technology and parents sharing their chosen baby name(s) on parenting websites such as like Nameberry and BabyCenter, we can now continually track the most popular and trending baby names in the United States throughout the year.

For instance, Olivia and Liam are currently ranked as the number one baby girl and boy names respectively for 2018 (according to BabyCenter).

Will Bluffton follow the trend?

According to Bluffton Hospital, baby Liam was born on Jan. 6 [http://www.blufftonicon.com/news/2018/02/02/here-are-births-january-bluf.... One month into the year, we are following the national trend for boy names.