As we approach towards the end of 2008 and step into 2009, we felt it is the right time to do some research and find the hottest baby names and naming trends for the year 2008.

Our general observation is that many of us had Girl babies. We are sure if there was a census of the babies born in 2008, it will be the year of the girl baby.

The naming trend for this year is that the most popular names are the traditional names. Names from the Vedas, mythology and Sanskrit appear very popular. In a poll we ran on our baby names site Indianhindunames.com for the last several months, 60% of the voters chose a Hindu name as their choice for their baby name, while 32% of voters chose to have an Indian name. Another 6% of the voters opted for a foreign name.

Our new born photo gallery is a good resource for us to get real names of the kids born this Year. The common names like Rajesh, Satish etc. which were a rage a decade ago is no longer in demand. Many people preferred to have their child names start with Alphabet 'A'. We had a lot of Abhisheiks, Adityas and Avantikas. The second preferred alphabet has been 'S'. There were lot of Sanjivs, Saniyas and Sanvis.

Parents really need a unique name for their baby and they will go that extra bit to identify a unique name or create a unique name of their own from popular names. We found a lot of new names like Ashvantika, Snikita etc.

Tradition rules and there are parents who still go with the time tested approach of naming their babies as per birth month rashi or their customs. A new trend is the consultation of a numerologist in advance while naming the baby so that they don't have to alter it in future. We have seen these names with extra alphabets than normal spelling in our gallery database which is a sign of numerological consultation.

We are sure 2009 will be a great year with new original names along with the traditional names. The world wide web gives us more name ideas than ever before and with the right tools, we can mould more. We wish you all a wonderful year of parenting.