The study used phonetics, patterns and structures of the human language (Picture: Getty)

Expecting a baby but unsure what to call your bundle of joy?

Well, recent research conducted by the University of Birmingham has found the top 50 most beautiful sounding baby names.

To collate the list, the study used phonetics, patterns and structures of the human language and scored the names on how much emotion they evoked when said out loud.

Sophia came top of the list for girls’ names in both the US and the UK – while Matthew and Zayn came out first for boys in the respective countries. 

How the name sounds was a big part of the findings, but other factors also play an influence on standings.

Cultural influences, gender and family history all play a part in how a name is perceived.

The research was conducted by Dr Bodo Winter who is an associate professor of cognitive linguists at the university.

He discovered that names beginning with the letter ‘E’ were shown to be more pleasing to the ears. Because of this the names Ellie, Emily, Evelyn, Eva and Elena rank in spots nine to 13.

Vegetation-inspired names like Ivy, Lily, and Violet all placed in the top 25.

Religious influences also had an impact.

Matthew, the number one name in the US, means ‘gift of God’ and Winter said this has many positive connotations associated with it when spoken aloud. 

Julian, William, Isaiah and Leo then completed the top five most beautiful sounding boys’ names in the US. 

In the UK, the names of male royals were found to be the most beautiful. Monikers like Louie, William and George all ranked in the top 10, in positions four, five and seven respectively. 

Meanwhile, Harry took the 17th spot as the most beautiful sounding boys’ name in the UK. 

For girls, names ending with an ‘ee’ sound proved popular. Zoe and Rosie took spots two and three, Sophie in fourth and Ivy in fifth.

Winter started this work by expanding on 2018 study published by The University of Warwick. This research analysed words, rather than names, to determine the ones that spark emotions.

‘Using an exciting piece of sound symbolism research from Adelman et al. (2018) as a starting point, we scored a number of the world’s most popular baby names in order to rank them,’ Winter said in a statement.

‘The names that ranked the most highly, provoked the most positive emotions when spoken out loud and therefore are likely to sound most beautiful to the human ear.’

Using the 2018 study as a base, Winter compiled the top 100 names for both boys and girls in the two regions and translated each one phonetically. This broke each name into syllables, capitalising the letter sounds that might be emphasised when pronouncing the name.

Names that could not be translated this way were eliminated from the study.

‘Once we had a list of the 50 most popular baby names for UK boys and girls, and US boys and girls, we then moved onto scoring each name,’ Winter added.

‘Finally, we calculated the sum of each name’s score, using these final figures to rank each list of top 50 names.’

Do you have a story to share?

Get in touch by emailing [email protected].

MORE : Greg, Debra, Chad, and Carolyn are in the top endangered baby names set to go extinct

MORE : Single mum who had a baby at 50 insists it was the ‘right’ time in her life to become a parent

MORE : I thought having two kids would be far easier than one – how wrong I was

Sophia topped the list in both the US and UK.