Last year, Legacy Salmon Creek welcomed 3,423 babies into the world. While Eli was the top name for boys, Addilyn was the most popular name given to girls.
Other top names for boys were Jackson, Benjamin, Aiden and Logan. Among girls, favorites were Emma, Liliana, Olivia and Madeline. Similar data for PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center was not available.
Misty Felts and her fiancé, Jarrod Gray, also knew their top name choice — Emma — was a popular one, but the name had too much meaning for the couple to name their daughter anything else when she was born in February.
Felts and Gray met while playing online poker. Felts used the screen name Emma because she always wanted that name for herself, and she didn’t want to use her real name online.
Felts’ and Gray’s online friendship turned to a relationship and Gray moved across the country to Vancouver so the couple could be together. When they learned they were pregnant with a daughter, they knew they had to name her Emma.
“We knew it was a popular name for babies, but we couldn’t turn down what the name Emma means to both of us,” Felts said.
Amanda and Austin Goddard also chose a name for their son despite its popularity. They welcomed their son, Aidan, in June.
“We were looking through baby names while I was pregnant, and that was the only thing that was clicking,” Amanda Goddard said.
Still, Goddard was concerned about the popularity of the name. Those fears were eased when she read that the name was decreasing in popularity.
“But the day we brought him in to his first doctor visit, they called like five other Aidans before ours,” Goddard said.
Shannon and Zack Vizenor knew their baby name of choice, Olivia, was popular when they decided on it several years ago. They scrapped the name, however, when they learned they were having a boy.
But when Shannon got pregnant again — this time with a girl — they went back to Olivia, even though the name had gotten even more popular. Their daughter was born in August.
“She’s going to go to school, and it’s going to be Olivia A. and Olivia B. and Olivia C,” Vizenor said. “But with a last name like Vizenor that nobody can pronounce or spell, it’s a nice counterbalance.”
Rachel and Cody Barham also had their baby name, Elijah, picked out several years ago. After their daughter Emma was born five years ago, they waited for Rachel to complete nursing school before having another baby.
“We kept fingers crossed as we saw family and friends having children,” Rachel Barham said. “Luckily, no one chose that name.”
So the Vancouver couple named their son Elijah when he arrived in July.
Julia Govea was first presented with the name Benjamin at her baby shower. She didn’t really care for the name but shared it with her fiancé, Freddy Lara, anyway. They’re a bilingual family, and Lara didn’t like how the name sounded in Spanish.
But when their son arrived in November, the couple wasn’t sure the other name they chose — Oliver — was a good fit.
“So, I then present Benjamin again to my fiancé,” Govea said. “He, for some reason, loved the name this time around.”
“So he was named Benjamin Oliver,” she said.
Lauren Tumm and Samuel Adler decided on the name Logan for their son after searching through names on the internet.
“It was a beautiful name, and we fell in love with it,” Tumm said.
The Vancouver couple also considered the name Leo, but went with Logan because it seemed less common. Their little Logan was born in September.
Aubrey and Sloan Smart of Vancouver also have a Logan. He was born in August.
“We were pretty set on Logan before I was even pregnant, but during my pregnancy, our oldest son was campaigning pretty hard for the baby’s name to be Anakin Skywalker,” Smart said. “We thought that was pretty cute.”
The Smarts chose the name Logan because Sloan’s favorite superhero is Wolverine, whose name is also Logan. Aubrey always liked the name, so she was happy to agree to it.
“We knew his name would be fairly popular, but we just really loved the name,” Aubrey Smart said. “And when we saw him, we knew it was the right name for him.”
“We must be in good company with other people in the community,” she added.
