Amelia-Rose or Lily-May - why are parents giving children double-barrelled names?

Recently revealed statistics on baby names reveal a sharp rise in hyphens

A growing number of people are choosing double-barrelled names for their children.

A spike in hyphenated first names has been recorded in the list of popular baby names released last week by the Office for National Statistics.

Baby girls were seemingly given 1,200 different hyphenated names last year, up from just 260 in the year 2000. Similarly, there were 328 such names given to boys- a tenfold increase since the 1990s.

Popular options included Amelia-Rose, Lily-May and Billie-Jo. Other combinations include using ‘Rose’ as a prefix or suffix.

The creative pairings are a distinctively British trend, with no similar rise recorded in the US or Australia, according to the Telegraph.

Some parents are likely to have been inspired by celebrity parents. Beyoncé and Jay Z have named their daughter Blue Ivy; Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis who named their daughter Lily-Rose.

Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis (Getty Images)

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and his wife Jools have been the family to embrace the trend the most wholeheartedly, calling their children Poppy Honey Rosie, Petal Blossom Rainbow, Daisy Boo Pamela and Buddy Bear Maurice.

The Office for National Statistics revealed Amelia was the most popular girls’ name in 2014, whilst Oliver was the most popular for boys.