Baby Center Australia has released its most popular names for 2013, with Oliver and Charlotte taking the #1 positions. Names with a strong V featured prominently, including Ava, Evie and Ivy, and X, with Jaxon and Jaxson included along with Jackson. Less common names from the site: Blue, Chevy, Blip and Daxx.

Meanwhile, News Limited looked at data from birth registries all over Australia to see how popular culture is affecting name choices. Some names from Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Downton Abbey, Mad Men, NCIS, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory are up, or appearing for the first time. There’s some rubbery figures, with whole groups of names being counted together, and even quite common names like Abby and Catelyn being counted as “pop culture”. Numbers are statistically significant, but overall very low, so no need to panic in regard to popularity. Most interesting factoid: Dexter peaked in 2010 at 67 births, so the chances of this name hitting the Top 100 are slipping away. Also the fairly ridiculous assertion that “popular culture” names will put your child in hospital … Health Department, please release a health warning on names!

Sabrina Rogers-Anderson from Kidspot is French Canadian by origin, and wanted a French middle name for her daughter, so she and her husband chose Fée – French for “fairy”, and pronounced FAY. Unfortunately, when they went to register the baby’s name in New South Wales, they were told that all accents and diacritical marks were forbidden. Rather than name their baby Arabella Fee, they changed the spelling and went with Fae. However, Sabrina believes that the rule is culturally insensitive, as it disallows valid names and spellings from other countries.

Rebel Wylie from Kidspot is expecting baby number three, a boy, and finds that all is not going well in choosing the name. In her tongue-in-cheek article, she claims her husband Andy is not playing fair in the baby name discussions, because he rejects every name she comes up with, but never suggests anything himself. After moaning about it to her girlfriends, it turns out The Sisterhood believes that the mother gets automatic naming rights as the one bonus of an otherwise miserable pregnancy. Rebel enthusiastically becomes a supporter of this theory, and chooses the name herself. She says Andy only gets a say-so if he can come up with something (she likes) better. A lot of angry comments from people who didn’t find it funny, but some interesting ones too.

Starts at Sixty website looked at the top baby names of 1950, with Jennifer and Peter leading the pack. The author of the article opines that in the past, parents were much more interested in tradition and the meanings of names, and chose accordingly, while today parents choose names from favourite places, TV stars, and brand names. I’m not convinced that parents don’t care about name meaning today – I get so many search terms from people looking for a name with a particular meaning. Lots of interesting comments from the 60+ crowd on how their names were chosen – including a Julie who had her name picked out of a hat (meaning and tradition?!) There were also plenty named after film stars, showing that celebrity name inspiration is no new phenomenon.

The Logan Reporter mourns the days when Sally, Jane, David and Brian were popular names. Newsflash from Logan – the 1960s are over. They’re still coping with the time-lag, including some problems with multicultural Australia. Oh dear.