Why baby names aren't getting as quirky as you might think (even if there WAS an 'Apple Paltrow' effect)

Baby names aren't getting wackier, despite what you might think, experts insist.

Hollywood icon Gwyneth Paltrow's naming of daughter Apple in 2004 inspired a massive surge in parents opting for unconventional names.

Yet MailOnline analysis suggests the trend has since calmed.

This is despite a catalogue of celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Beyonce and Elon Musk resorting to unusual names in the past few years.

Kim gave birth to North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm-West while with ex Kanye West, while Beyonce has Blue Ivy and twins Rumi and Sir with fellow rapper Jay Z. Meanwhile, eccentric billionaire Musk had X Æ A-Xii (pronounced X Ash A-12), Exa Dark Sideræl and Techno Mechanicus with musician Grimes before they split.

For 2022, the most unusual registrations for boys include Swastik, Excel and Draco (all had three recordings each), while Monalisa, Kale and Monet all cropped up at least three times among girls.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows there were 13,544 names registered in England and Wales in 2022.

Yet this only includes names used at least three times, meaning the true toll will be even higher.

The overall figure is up 56 per cent on the 8,671 logged in 1996 when modern ONS records began.

Over the same time, the number of babies born in England and Wales has plunged by 45,000 in what experts have been calling a population crisis.

It means the number of babies split between each registered name now stands shy of 45, far below the 75 observed in the mid-90s.

Yet the share of unique names – classed by MailOnline as having no more than three recordings each year – stayed flat for boys over the 27-year analysis. Around 23 per cent of boys' names logged are unique.

For girls, however, the proportion has risen by around 10 percentage points.

Around 23.5 per cent of girls' names were unique in 1996, rising to 29.2 per cent in 2004 when Apple was born to Gwyneth and Coldplay star Chris Martin.

2007 saw the biggest jump in unique names, MailOnline found. Rates continued to rise until 2012, when they started to slowly fall out of favour.

Dr Rebecca Gregory, assistant professor of historical linguistics and onomastics at the University of Nottingham, told MailOnline that unusual namings tend to boom and bust on an unpredictable cycle.

'It's really unclear to what extent the trend for unusual naming has ever been particularly strong because it's interesting when it happens so you hear a lot about it but could distort the name's actual popularity,' she said.

Dr Gregory says that if unique becomes commonplace, there may be a corresponding shift back towards more conventional names.

Dr Gregory points out that in the Coldplay frontman's case, his daughter's name is actually indicative of a much more common, embedded trope in English society.

'Particularly for girls, changing common nouns into names is far from unheard of,' she said.

'Just as the Victorians did with flowers or plants like Iris, Rose, Holly and Lavender; they were new at the time but now they are considered a standard set.'

Dr Gregory added: 'Within the last five years, people are certainly hyphenating names so Ellie-May rather than Ellie as an example and that means ONS data doesn't recognise it as an Ellie or a May.

'We've been a lot more traditional taking names from an existing pool.

'But elsewhere it's much more common to create names out of nowhere, so it's not wacky at all depending on where you come from.'