These Are the Most Popular Destinations to Name Your Baby After, Survey Shows

Cailey Rizzo
·1 min read
2

Some kids are given the travel bug at birth — all just starting with their name.

Luggage storage service Bounce has identified a trend amongst American parents to name their baby after an important location. According to Bounce, the trend may have started when parents began naming kids after "a favorite holiday destination, honeymoon spot, or even the city where they were conceived."

And then there are some location-inspired names that just sound cool.

The survey results reported that from 2000 to 2020, the most popular country to name your child after was Israel (with a total of 36,273 babies in the U.S. receiving the name, both boys and girls). The second-most popular country-cum-baby-name was India (with 9,207 babies, all girls), closely followed by Kenya (with 9,127 babies, predominantly girls).

Mother traveling with her baby
Mother traveling with her baby

Oscar Wong/Getty Images

The survey also tallied up the results for city-inspired names. In the U.S., the most popular baby boys' name was Preston, with 69,922 babies born with the name from 2020 to 2022. While the town name can be found in both Connecticut and Idaho, in originally comes from the English city of Preston, located in the county of Lancashire.

For girls, the most popular travel name is Sydney. Within the 20-year studied span, more than 105,000 babies were named after the Australian capital.

Over in the UK, the results were slightly different within the same timespan, with the most popular travel-inspired name for boys was Chester while the top girls' name was Florence.

For a full list of the most popular names, along with the methodology, you can visit the full survey results on the Bounce blog.

Cailey Rizzo is a contributing writer for Travel + Leisure, currently based in Brooklyn. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, or at caileyrizzo.com.