Will royal baby spark a lot of George babies?
By George! That's a lot of Georges!
If you're living in the U.K. in 2014, expect to see a lot more newborns named George over the coming year.
Following Thursday's announcement that Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, named their son George Alexander Louis, Ancestry.com predicts there will be a noticeable uptick in birth certificates with that very name.
The family history resource site found that the birth of a royal baby typically boosts the popularity of that name by an average of 32 percent the year following the birth. If that's the case, there would be an estimated 1,400 extra babies born in the U.K. over the next year with baby Cambridge's given name -- possibly making George the 4th most popular name there. George is already relatively popular as it's the 12th most common name in the U.K., with 4,340 born each year.
Ancestry.com pointed out that the year after Prince William was born saw 23 percent bump in William names. And the year following Prince Harry's birth? The site says the Harry name jumped 55 percent in popularity. Prince Andrew's 1960 birth, meanwhile, saw the biggest overall increase, with the number of "Andrews" born in 1961 rising by more than 5,500 over the previous year.
According to Ancestry.com, royal birth names between 1841 to 2005 were included in the study.
The site noted: "The royal naming pattern was uncovered through historical analysis of yearly birth indexes available on Ancestry.com, which detail every baby born in England and Wales from 1837 to 2005. The number of babies with the same name as a royal baby in the year of the royal's birth was compared with the number in the following year. Every royal from King Edward VII (born in 1841) to Princess Eugenie (born in 1990) was included in the study."
