The Social Security Administration has released a list of the most popular baby names in the United States. In the year 2014, the top names for both boys and girls were Noah and Emma respectively.
According to a report from BBC News, Noah topped the list for boys' names for the second year in a row, followed by Liam, Mason, Jacob and William. As for girls' names, Emma made it on top for the first time since 2008, followed by Olivia, Sophia, Isabella and Ava.
"In this era when trends come and go faster than ever before, that's incredible staying power," Laura Wattenberg, founder of Babynamewizard.com, said. "Emma seems to be the only name that America has been able to agree on in recent years."
BBC News reported that religion and pop culture have been major influences in the trends for naming babies throughout history.
"Emma's popularity was influenced by the TV show 'Friends' in 2002, when one of the characters, Rachel, named her daughter Emma," the BBC wrote.
According to a report from the Bay Area News Group, California's baby naming trends closely mirrored that of the rest of the country with the exceptions for Sebastian and Camilla.
"Sebastian jumped 12 spots in a year to snag the state's No. 9 spot in 2014," Bay Area News Group wrote. "Among all U.S. baby boys last year, the name was No. 34."
Bay Area News Group added that Camilla was in the top 10 for girls' names in California, but ranked at No. 41 in the rest of the U.S.
"A year late, California got on the Noah train," Bay Area News Group wrote. "The name jumped from No. 6 to No. 1 for the state's boys, knocking Jacob to second. The national trend for William was ignored here: It was only 27th."
According to Bay Area News Group, Sophia was the No. 1 girl name in California, while the outlier name in that state was Victoria; it knocked out Samantha from the top 10 names.
The Bay Area News Group then looked at baby name trends in other parts of the country.
"In most states, the No. 1 names were among the top five for the nation as a whole, though Harper as a girl's name showed a strong Midwest trend," Bay Area News Group wrote. "No. 11 in the nation, it cracked the top five in 11 states, all west of the Mississippi, and was No. 1 in both of the Dakotas."
Chris Wilson of Time.com explained the methodology used by the Social Security Administration for displaying name trends. The website also published its own baby name generator.
"Whenever names were tied for popularity in a given year or decade, they were assigned the same rank," Wilson wrote in explaining how his publication's baby name generator worked. "Many names have drifted from being associated with boys to being associated with girls over the years, so it can appear as though female names are showing up in the male results."
