LONG before Tom Cruise named his daughter Suri, or Gwyneth Paltrow called her son Moses, a Christian rocker named Sonny Sandoval christened his daughter Nevaeh.

“‘Heaven’ spelled backwards,” he explained to bewildered fans on MTV. The name, pronounced na-VAY-uh, caught on and is now the most popular new name in America since the Government began keeping national records more than a century ago.

In the year before Sandoval’s TV appearance in 2000, only eight babies in America were given the name Nevaeh. But in 2001 Nevaeh broke into the top 1,000 names list at No 266.

By last year Nevaeh had jumped to No 70, higher than Sara, Vanessa and Amanda, although no celebrities have chosen the name, it is not used in any other country and is not in the Bible (unless you are reading backwards).

Cleveland Evans, a professor of psychology, author of The Great Big Book of Baby Names and president of the American Name Society, questions its religious origins. During his research, he chanced on one of the eight Nevaehs born in 1999, before Sandoval’s TV appearance. The child’s mother said that she had made up the name after reading the novels of V. C. Andrews, in which the teenage heroine is nicknamed Heaven.

“I think it’s mostly young, working-class parents. It’s more popular among African-Americans than other races,” Mr Evans said.

“But I am not sure it’s right that it’s particularly religious. I have had several communications from people who claim not to be religious but thought it was a cool name.”

Tony Hendrickson, from Merrill, Wisconsin, picked the name for his daughter even though he is not a regular churchgoer because he does not like common names. “Me and my mum were talking with one of our friends. They were telling a story about a baby with that name and they said it was ‘heaven’ backwards. My wife liked it,” Mr Hendrickson said. “It’s sort of a little angel.”

There is almost universal agreement that Nevaeh is a girl’s name. Inverting words has also produced a newly popular name for boys: Semaj is now the 704th most popular name for American boys.

Semaj (James backwards) is largely used by blacks and seems to derive from Rastafarianism, the Jamaican religious movement. Mr Evans said that many parents appeared to have been inspired by Leachim Semaj, a Jamaican activist, psychologist and radio host who was born Michael James.

The most popular girl’s name in the US is Emily, which replaced Ashley nine years ago. The most popular boy’s name is Jacob, which ended Michael’s 45-year run in 1999.

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