Most popular baby names inspired by travel destinations

Actor, director and producer Ron Howard famously gave his children middle names based on where they were conceived: Bryce Dallas (the city), twins Paige and Jocelyn share the middle name Carlyle (the New York hotel), and Reed Cross (the street where the family lived in London).

Location names are nothing new, however, and many people give their offspring a moniker that reminds them of a favorite city or country — or even river.

In fact, the most popular travel-inspired name for American boys this year is Hudson, inspired by the river in New York, according to research from Bounce.

Bounce analyzed baby names from the past 20 years to reveal the destinations that most inspire baby names in the United States.

According to the travel and luggage experts, more than 77,000 baby boys born in the U.S. since 2000 are named Hudson.

After Hudson, the top 10 location-inspired boys names, in order, were:

For U.S. girls, the most popular name is a bit more international. More than 107,000 baby girls born since 2000 were named Sydney, inspired by Australia’s famous harbor city that hosted the Summer Olympics in 2000.

After Sydney, the top destination names for girls were, in order of popularity:

For its research, according to TravelPulse, Bounce required experts to “source the total number of babies born with each travel-inspired name in the U.S. between 2000 and 2021 with data from the U.S. Census Bureau.”

It then created a list of potential travel-related baby names inspired by country names, capital cities, rivers, mountains, general travel-related terms, and other major cities and travel destinations worldwide. Those were cross-referenced with the list with the baby names data to find out which travel terms were used most often.

Do you have a favorite destination that would make a good name? Like, for instance, Savannah? Or Macon? Let us know in the comments.