The world's 10 most beautiful baby names - according to Birmingham expert
Shakespeare gave us "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet".
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But it is Sophia and Zayn and not 'Romeo and Juliet' which are top of the tree when it comes to the sweetest sounding baby names.
Research carried out by Birmingham University's language expert Professor Bodo Winter and baby goods website my1styears.com found that the most pleasant-sounding baby names based on linguistic and phonetic methods in the UK are Sophia, the Zoe and Rosie. While the top boys names are Zayn followed by Jesse and Charlie.
Zayn has grown in popularity in recent years due to One Direction former member Zayn Malik. Other popular choices are influenced by the Royal Family with Louie, William and George all featuring in the top 10 sweetest list.
The specialist in cognitive linguistics also found that across the pond in the United States that Sophia, meaning wisdom, also came top followed by Zoe and Everly. For boys the easiest name on the ears is again Matthew, meaning gift of God, followed by Julian and William.
My 1st Years says while every child's name is beautiful scientific principles of linguistics such as "sound symbolism" reveals that some words and names sound better than others.
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The 10 most beautiful girls names
Sophia
Zoe
Rosie
Sophie
Ivy
Phoebe
Violet
Willow
Hannah
The 10 most beautiful boys names
Zayn
Jesse
Charlie
Louie
William
Freddie
George
Ali
Daniel
Riley
