Number Of Parents Naming Daughter Alexa Halves After Success of Amazon Device

29 August 2019, 16:53

Less people are calling their baby girls Alexa due to the success of Amazon's AI device
Less people are calling their baby girls Alexa due to the success of Amazon's AI device. Picture: PA

The name Alexa has fallen out of favour thanks to the the success of Amazon's virtual assistant, new statistics have suggested.

The number of parents given their newborn daughters the moniker halved from 2017 to 2018, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

In 2017, there were 301 baby girls called Alexa, making it the 181st most popular female name.

But in the space of 12 months the number fell to 118, knocking it down to the 380th place.

Nick Stripe, from the ONS, said: "The growth in the use of technology assistants in our homes may help to explain why the number of baby girls named Alexa has more than halved compared with 2017.

"Communicating with young children can be hard enough at the best of times.

“We’ve seen a similar pattern in the American baby names data, so something must be going on.

"It has dropped by more than 50%, so I think there is probably evidence of a link.

The full study also revealed the most popular names for boys and girls in 2018.

For boys, Oliver remained the most popular name for the sixth year in a row, while for girls, Olivia took the crown for the third year running.

Other popular names could have been influenced by the success of TV shows such as Peaky Blinders.

Mr Stripe added: "Arthur surged into the top 10 boys’ names for the first time since the 1920s, and Ada jumped into the girls’ top 100 for the first time in a century too, both perhaps inspired by characters in the BBC TV drama Peaky Blinders."