By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Isabella and Jayden are the most popular baby names in New York City last year, city officials said.
The most recent tally of birth certificates indicates that Isabella, the top name in 2007, came back to triumph over Sophia. Jayden carried over for the second year in a row, the city's Health Department said Tuesday.
All in all, there were 1,424 newborn New Yorkers named either Isabella or Jayden last year, out of a total of 126,774 babies born in the city.
The other girl names on the top ten list were Sophia, Mia, Emily, Olivia, Madison, Sarah, Ashley, Leah and Emma.
The other popular boy names were Daniel, Ethan, Michael, David, Justin, Matthew, Joshua, Alexander and Christopher.
Name preferences varies across racial and ethnic groups. For example, Isabella ranked first for total girl baby names and for the city’s Hispanic population, but Madison, Olivia and Sophia were most popular for Black, White and Asian populations respectively, the Health Department found.
Jayden ranked first for both the Hispanic and Black populations in 2009, while Michael and Ryan took first place amongst the city’s White and Asian populations, the report said.
The department found that pop culture and biblical names widely influenced New Yorker’s decisions on what to name their youngsters. Jayden is closely related to Jaden, the name of Will Smith’s son, and “Bella” is a common nickname for Isabella, the girlfriend of vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight series.
Biblical names were also trendy, with Esther, Genesis, Joshua, Elijah, Angel and Jeremiah all placing in the top 100 names for New York babies, the Health Department said
In contrast, the most unusual names are Nava and Zeldy for girls, and Drake, Orion and Pinchus for boys.
