News

Royal wedding to make Kate top UK girls' name

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-04-29 11:12

Kate is likely to be one of the most popular names for baby girls born in Britain next year following the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton, an ancestry website predicted Thursday.

Ancestry.co.uk found that 230 million birth and marriage records dating from 1837 revealed a royal wedding naming pattern which saw popularity for names of princesses rise dramatically in the years they married.

"We have scoured millions of our records and found that every time there is a royal wedding, parents rush to name their new-born daughters after the princess," the site's International Content Director Dan Jones said in a statement.

The popularity of the name Diana -- Prince William's late mother -- doubled when she married heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles in 1981. Elizabeth and Victoria also increased in popularity in the years of their marriages.

The trend can also be observed when examining the number of Elizabeths born the year of Queen Elizabeth II's wedding in 1947, as well as her mother's in 1923.

And the pattern is not only true of the 20th century -- the number of Victorias born increased by 35 percent the year Queen Victoria and Prince Albert married in 1840.

Royal baby births tend to have the same effect.

The names William and Harry rose in popularity throughout the 1990s and early 2000s following the births of the two princes, as did those of other royal children Zara, Andrew, Anne, Beatrice and Eugenie.