A Very Specific Baby Name Trend Is Emerging For ‘Generation Beta’ Babies
The '90s are back, baby!
NPK_narong from NPK_Universe | Vika_Glitter | pixabay | Canva Pro At this point, weird baby names are as American as apple pie or constantly eroding access to healthcare, but now that Gen Zers are becoming parents, some new baby naming trends are emerging in ways that are perhaps unexpected. If you're of a certain age, the new wave of Generation Beta babies being born is about to send you on a nostalgic journey back in time as what's old becomes new again.
Emerging Generation Beta baby name trends are a throwback to the 1990s.
First of all, yes: Even though we've only just begun talking about Generation Alpha, we're already on Generation Beta. Demographers, social scientists, and others who work on this stuff define Gen Alpha as kids born between 2010 and 2024, and Gen Beta as those born in 2025 through 2039.
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And much like basically everything else they've interacted with, Generation Beta's Gen Z parents are changing the game on baby names. Which is good news: The awful Gen X and millennial trend of naming every baby something weird and ridiculous, like Trigger and Brÿeinleeiygh, is at last coming to an end.
What's replacing it? Basically, Gen Z's well-known nostalgia for everything '90s and Y2K. They may have been only barely sentient at the time (Gen Zers were born between 1997 and 2012), but their baby naming trends show they are more than familiar with the pop culture of the time, regardless.
Gen Z'ers are giving their Generation Beta babies 90s celebrity names like Britney and Shania.
The trend was spotted by parenting website BabyCenter.com, which keeps track of naming habits using the Social Security Administration's published data on baby names. They discovered that names like Britney, specifically spelled the same as Britney Spears, and Shania, in reference to country star Shania Twain, who had her heyday in the '90s, suddenly made big jumps in popularity.
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Britney climbed 1,200 spots in the list this year, the biggest spike for the name since 1999, the year Spears herself became a household name, dropping her iconic tune "Hit Me Baby One More Time" at the end of 1998. Meanwhile, Twain's unique first name jumped 856 spots this year, something that likely WILL much impress the "That Don't Impress Me Much" songstress.
Other '90s names rising through the ranks include Sabrina of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" fame (though that could just as easily be because of current pop sensation Sabrina Carpenter), and Diana, which BabyCenter attributes to the memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in 1997, still going strong.
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Boy names might be bearing the trend too: The hot names in 2025 so far are ones like Noah, Liam and Ezra, which I am choosing to believe are references to "ER" heartthrob Noah Wyle, Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, and alt-rock band Better Than Ezra, and will not be accepting other explanations!
Naming babies after '90s brands has become a trend, too.
"Quiet luxury" may be one of Gen Z's favorite social media trends, but when it comes to naming their babies, it's all about loud, ostentatious luxury instead. BabyCenter found that naming babies after high-end brands is once again a trend.
Among the most popular are Laurent, as in Yves Saint Laurent, Bentley, like the luxury cars with the six-figure price tag, and Tiffany, like the iconic turquoise-colored jewelry maker. All had a heyday of sorts in the '90s. Bentleys were everywhere in the "flossy" era of '90s hip hop, and Tiffany went from blue-blood elite to upper-middle-class aspirational during the same period.
But perhaps no luxury Generation Beta baby name is quite so '90s as Manolo, as in gazillion-dollar shoemaker Manolo Blahnik, a brand forever tied to shoe-obsessed Carrie Bradshaw on the game-changing TV show "Sex and the City," which debuted in 1998. Sarah Jessica Parker, you will always be famous, even amongst Generation Beta.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
