New York City's Most Popular Baby Names: Isabella and Jayden

By Paul Bisceglio If a new mother in the city happens to challenge you to guess her baby's name, you now know your safest bet: Isabella or Jayden. On Wednesday, mayor Michael Bloomberg announced New York City's most popular baby names of 2011. The results were gleaned from the Health Department's birth certificates, which identified 623 girls named Isabella and 851 boys named Jayden out of the 123,029 babies born in the city last year. Both names now have retained their number one position for three years in a row. The survey included rankings of the top 10 names for boys and girls in the city, both overall and by race, as well as notes on celebrity inspirations, spelling variations and babies named after places. Sofia's in, Sophia's even cooler and, according to the [New York Times](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/mayor-makes-it-official-it-was-a-big-year-for-isabella-and-jayden/), Brooklyn's not nearly as popular as it used to be. "A baby born in New York City has a life expectancy 2.5 years longer than the national average, in no small part due to our bold public health initiatives," Bloomberg proclaimed. "This means we can expect to see many of the very popularly named Isabellas and Jaydens ? like these two little ones with us today ? more than 80 years from now." Check out the official [press release](http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2012b%2Fpr311-12.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1) for more stats and rankings.