It's a girl!
The hottest news in the preschool set is the arrival of Peppa Pig's little sibling. Speculation has brewed for months about whether Peppa would be getting a little sister or another brother. On May 30, the newest member of the Pig family made their debut — a sister!
Not only that, but Peppa's sister's name was also announced: Evie, a name that means "life." She was named after Mummy Pig's aunt.
Now, it's no secret that Peppa is a trend-setter. She's made preschoolers speak in faux English accents and say things like "sun cream" instead of sunscreen. She's beefed with celebrities like Adele and earned high marks for her album on taste-making music websites. But will the newest addition to the Pig family boost the baby name Evie?
Evidence shows, she already has. The baby-naming website Nameberry keeps track of interest in names among its users. The site reports there's a 102% increase in interest in the name Evie this week. The name is hot, and getting hotter! (Even Pokémon has declared 2025 the "Year of Eevee," but of course the Pokémon is spelled differently.)
Then again, the Pig family may be jumping on a trend rather than starting it. The Social Security Administration keeps track of baby-name popularity in the United States going back to the year 1900, maintaining a list of the 1,000 most popular names each year. The name Evie actually dropped off the list in 1942, and stayed absent from it for decades — but not forever. In 2007, it re-entered the list as the 807th most popular name, and it's been steadily getting more popular ever since. Last year, it reached No. 284.
The name Evelyn, which could use Evie as a nickname, is even more successful. Unlike Evie, Evelyn has been hanging around the SSA list since the 1900s. And while it was an extremely popular name at the turn of the century, it only managed to crack into the top 10 once in the 20th century, in 1915, when it was No. 10. But since the '90s, it's been steadily climbing, and Evelyn actually had its best-ever year last year, reaching the No. 8 spot on the SSA list for the first time.
It's safe to say the name has already eclipsed Peppa itself, since Peppa doesn't appear at all on the SSA top 1,000. (Neither do similar variants, like Pippa, or names that could use Peppa as a nickname, like Philippa.) George, now the middle child, is also in the middle of Evie and Evelyn in terms of name popularity: His name is No. 124 on the SSA list. It'll be interesting to see how these shift as the Pig family, now a family of five, finds its new footing.
Marisa (she/her) has covered all things parenting, from the postpartum period through the empty nest, for Good Housekeeping since 2018; previously, she wrote about parents and families at Parents and Working Mother. She lives with her toy-collecting husband and daughter in Brooklyn, where she can be found helping out her team at bar trivia or posting about movies on Twitter and Bluesky.
