By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail. Science has taken the guesswork out of choosing the most beautiful sounding baby names for parents in the United States and the United Kingdom. The study, conducted by the University of Birmingham , used phonetics, which studies the sounds, patterns and structures of the human language and scored the names on how much emotion they evoked when saying allowed.
It found that the name Sophia topped the list of girls' names in the US and the UK - while Matthew and Zayn topped the list for boys in the respective countries. Although the research suggests some baby names sound more beautiful than others, there are other factors that play a role in how nice-sounding a name is, including cultural influences, gender and family history. The research was conducted by Dr Bodo Winter who is an associate professor of cognitive linguists at the university.
Winter also found that names beginning with the letter 'E' were shown to more pleasing to the ears - Ellie, Emily, Evelyn, Eva and Elena ranking in spots nine to thirteen. And vegetation-inspired names also made the cut: Ivy, Lily, and Violet all placing in the top Matthew, number one, means 'gift of God' and Winter said has many positive connotations associated with it when spoken aloud.
Julian, William, Isaiah and Leo completed the top five most beautiful sounding boys' names in the US. Scroll down for full list of names. Across the Atlantic, names of male royals were found to be the most beautiful sounding, with Louie, William and George all ranking in the top ten, in positions four, five and seven respectively. Harry just misses the top ten, ranking in 17th spot as the most beautiful sounding boys' name in the UK. For girls, names ending with an 'ee' sound proved popular after Zoe and Rosie took spots two and three, with other top 10 entries including Sophie in fourth, Ivy in fifth,.
Pictured are the top 10 for both the US and UK. Winter began this work by building from a study published by The University of Warwick, which analyzed words, rather than names, to determine which ones spark emotions. Using the research as a blueprint, Winter compiled the top names for both boys and girls in the two regions and translated each one phonetically, which broke each name into syllables, capitalizing the letter sounds that might be emphasized when pronouncing the name.
