The most beautiful baby names according to a linguistic expert

The most beautiful baby names in the world have been revealed. Photo / 123rf

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A list of the most beautiful sounding baby names according to linguistics has emerged.

British baby website My 1st Years has partnered with Dr Bodo Winter, Associate Professor of Cognitive Linguistics from the University of Birmingham, to reveal the top names.

The science is based on sound symbolism, which is the idea that some words sound better than others based on the resemblance between the sound of a word and its meaning.

There are also other sensory ideas associated with it, such as touch and smell.

The experts analysed hundreds of baby names from the UK and the United States to discover which were the best.

In the top spot for boys was the name Zayn, inspired by former One Direction member Zayn Malik at the height of the boy band’s popularity more than a decade ago.

Many names in the top 10 including Louie, William and George were inspired by the royal family.

For girls in the UK, names with a strong “e” sound such as Sophia, Zoe, Rosie, Sophie and Ivy stood firmly in the top five.

However, in the US, the most beautiful-sounding name for boys is Matthew, which has the meaning “gift of God”.

The name scored so highly as it has many positive connotations associated with it when spoken aloud.

Julian, William, Isaiah and Leo completed the top five most beautiful-sounding boys’ names in the US.

Again, for the girls, the name Sophia took out the top spot, with the name stemming from Greece in the fourth century, meaning wisdom.

The only difference between the two countries was that Ivy did not make the US top five, with the name Everly featuring instead.

Dr Winter explains: “There are a lot of things that affect name choice, and several of these have been explored in research. For example, research by Stephanie Shih shows that parents try to avoid choosing first names that would clash with their family names.

“If your family name starts with ‘S’, such as Scott, Smith, Saunders, or Sullivan, it may be advisable not to have a first name that ends in ‘s’, such as Marcus, Charles, or Nicolas – because the two ‘s’ sounds will blend into each other.

“Shih’s research has used data from Facebook account names to show that there is indeed a small tendency for parents to prefer names without ‘s’ when their last name starts with ‘s’.”

Data showed that a major weather event’s name – such as a hurricane – can heavily inspire the sounds of the next generation’s names.

But, the expert added, everything from country, culture, family history and gender can impact linguistics when it comes to names.