When Rebecca Day and her husband, Mike, chose their daughter’s name in 2019, they had no idea how popular it would become. “We thought we were safe!” laughs Rebecca. “We chose Luna because we didn’t know any other Lunas.”
Fast forward 18 months and Luna is now, according to the Baby Name website, Nameberry, the most popular girl’s name in eight countries, including the US, the UK and the Philippines. And while the old favourites, Charlotte and Oliver, have topped Australia’s most popular baby name list for the eighth year running according to McCrindle Research, the company that collates the names each year, the name Luna has been steadily climbing since it entered the top 100 in 2017, and now sits comfortably at 44.
Social researcher Ashley Fell, who is communications director at McCrindle Research, puts the rise of Luna – as well as Willow (which is now perched at number 9 and is the name of Will Smith’s daughter and Pink’s eldest) down to celebrity influence: “Luna has been growing in popularity since Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s daughter, Luna, was born in 2016,” she says.
“I didn’t really process that it was Chrissy’s kid’s name until we started thinking about it,” says Rebecca of the name. “It was our five-year-old son, Frankie, who suggested it after watching Harry Potter and seeing Luna Lovegood, [a witch played by actress Evanna Lynch] – who is a great character. And we wanted something cute when it was inevitably shortened – ‘Lu’ worked for us.”