The country’s hottest name is practically a style in itself.

The top rising name of the year takes multiple forms: Ailany, Aylani or Ailani. All three versions rank among the top five hottest girls’ names of the year.

The names are the perfect meeting point of two defining styles of the past decade. The first is “liquid names,” a smooth, vowel-dominated style with a frictionless flow of sound. The second is the ending -lani, which has become a staple for American girls with help from the remarkably influential name of the singer Kehlani.

Almost any combination and spelling of the sounds in Ailany make for a fashionable name choice today. The names Alana, Lainey, Ayla, Eliana, Analeia and Alana were also top-25 fast risers last year. Brand-new names in the popularity stats included Ailanys, Lyanni, Ayliani and more.

Rounding out the top five for girls were Scottie and Elodie. Scottie is part of America’s rising trend of cute, boyish nicknames for girls, but not boys. Internet personality Allison Kuch and football player Isaac Rochell welcomed a daughter named Scottie at the end of 2023. The French name Elodie has been gaining momentum in multiple languages and is finally poised to become popular in the U.S., with help from French-born actress Elodie Yung.

For boys, the #1 fastest rising name was Truce. This name fits perfectly with the growing style of one-syllable positive energy word names like Dream, True, Saint, Pax and Reign. As for the rest of the boys’ top five, Eithan and Eliam have the feel of biblical names popular with Spanish-speaking families, and Colsen and Bryer have the feel of neo-cowboy names.

I wish I could offer more details on what inspired them, but new names are harder to research than ever before due to the changing nature of celebrity. Internet influencers in particular tend to exist in a sealed ecosystem of fame. They can be larger than life for their 800,000 followers yet utterly invisible to everyone else. If you know more than I do about any of the above names, please share your wisdom! The full top 10:

…and one notable falling name

No popular name fell faster in 2024 than Reagan (F). The name had already begun to decline, but last year’s plummet was dramatic. Reagan has long been one of the names that divided red-state and blue-state style. The surname is strongly associated with Ronald Reagan, the iconic figurehead of modern conservatism, and so tended to be one-sided. As a new Republican administration turns away from many of Reagan’s policies, the late president’s name appears to be losing its constituency.