Cooper Flagg may have just become a household name nationwide in the past year, as the basketball phenom from an unlikely place secured his spot as the presumed No. 1 pick in the NBA draft this month.

But Maine sportswriters have been talking about Flagg since at least 2021, just before the start of his freshman season at Nokomis Regional High School in Newport.

That same year, Cooper shot up the list of the most popular male baby names in Maine, jumping from No. 79 to No. 26 and only slightly dropping since then to No. 32 last year.

Although it might be a stretch to attribute the name’s initial leap in popularity to the then-burgeoning hype around Flagg, his ascent into the national spotlight certainly could have helped keep it high on the list.

“Sports have huge impacts on baby names,” said Sophie Kihm, editor-in-chief of baby naming website Nameberry — as do celebrity parents, social media influencers and music.

Oliver and Charlotte, the top names in Maine last year, were also in the top five nationally, according to data released by the U.S. Social Security Administration in May, around Mother’s Day.

For Father’s Day, we took a deeper look at recent trends in Maine baby names and what might be behind them.

RIGHT NAME, RIGHT TIME

Not just any name in the limelight is likely to catch on.

“You kind of have to fit this formula to already be a stylish name and have the right catalyst,” Kihm said.

Nationally, Cooper has been steadily on the rise since it entered the top 1,000 names in 1982, peaking last year at No. 50 – still not as popular as in Flagg’s home state.

For girls names, Aurora has seen a surge in popularity, peaking at No. 10 in Maine in 2023 and at No. 16 in the U.S. last year. Can we assume it has something to do with recent sightings of the northern lights, aka aurora borealis, as the solar cycle reached its height?

That’s what came to mind for Jocelynn Ridley of Auburn when her fiancé, Darian Chapman, suggested the name for their baby girl, born in November.

Chapman said he got the idea from a singer in his school’s vocal ensemble whose beautiful voice had moved him as a child, as have the colors of the northern lights.

Ridley liked the idea of her daughter sharing the name with “a very cool phenomenon.” Plus, she said, “I just think it’s a really pretty name.”

Amanda Ginn of Scarborough wanted a name that started and ended with “a,” like her and her mother Anita’s names. Her husband, whose taste leans more traditional than hers, suggested Aurora, and she liked its celestial connection.

They waited until their daughter was born, in September of 2023, to decide, and it was a fit.

“It’s been so special, her first year of life, being able to see the aurora borealis,” Ginn said.

MOVED BY MOVIES

There’s evidence that the northern lights have boosted the name’s popularity elsewhere: At different times in the last 10 years, Kihm said, it’s been the most popular girls name in Alaska, where they’re most frequently visible.

But its national popularity also coincides with the release of the movie “Maleficent,” a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” that came out in 2014. Aurora — played by Elle Fanning in the film — broke into the top 100 girls names in the U.S. the next year.

Another film (and book) character could explain the increase in the number of boys named Atlas — Lily Bloom’s childhood friend from the fictional town of Plethora, Maine, in the 2016 Colleen Hoover romance novel “It Ends with Us.”

The name peaked nationally at No. 101 last year, when the film adaptation was released — and garnered outsized attention because of the feud between costars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.

In Maine, there were 19 baby boys named Atlas born both last year and the year before, when the name was ranked No. 59 and No. 55 in the state, respectively.

POLITICAL POWER

That’s the thing about having such a small population, Kihm said. It doesn’t take many babies to get into the top 100 names, and it also means the rankings vary from the national list more than they do in larger states. Because the Social Security Administration only notes names used five or more times, she said, some relatively popular Maine names go undetected.

There was one name that Kihm found, however, that made the five-name threshold in Maine last year but nowhere else in the country: Horace.

She suspected it might have something to do with Maine having had a governor with the name, Horace Hildreth, who served two terms in the 1940s.

Does that mean we should expect the same for our current governor, who made headlines this year and legions of new fans after a confrontation with President Trump in February?

There were 74 baby Janets born in the U.S. last year, but not enough in Maine to register on the Social Security Administration’s list. Kihm said there’s a 100-year rule with names, meaning that the whole generation who popularized them has to die before new parents will start to “see it as a fresh option.”

So while Janet Mills’ “See you in court” retort might have made it onto T-shirts, as to whether the viral moment will influence the baby-name rankings, Kihm said, “I’m going to have to say no on that one.”