IRELAND’S MOST POPULAR baby names for 2021 have been revealed by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), and a new name has reached the top spot for baby girls.
For the fifth year in a row, Jack is the most popular name for boys, but Fiadh has overtaken Grace to become the most popular name for girls.
The top five names for boys were Jack, Noah, James, Conor and Rían, with Liam, Charlie, Daniel, Cillian and Tadhg rounding out the top 10.
The top five names for girls were Fiadh, Grace, Emily, Sophie and Éabha, with Lucy, Mia, Ava, Lily and Ella making up the rest of the top 10.
Jack has held the top spot as the most popular boys’ name since 2007, with the exception of 2016 when James narrowly beat the choice as the most popular name.
Jack, Conor and James have made the top five since 1998. Noah joined in 2018 after ranking sixth most popular the year before, and has remained there since.
Fiadh has grown in popularity every year since 2009 when it was the 488th most popular girls name. The name ranked third in 2019 and moved to second most popular in 2020.
Grace, Emily and Sophie have been permanent fixtures in the top five names for baby girls every year since 2016.
Not one of the top five names for girls in 2021 appeared in the top 100 names fifty years ago.
In 1971, Mary, Catherine, Margaret, Fiona and Sinead were the most popular names for baby daughters, with 1,907 baby girls named Mary in that year.
In 2021, there were 424 baby girls named Fiadh, 22.2% of the number of girls given the name Mary (1,907) in 1971.
John, Michael, Patrick, David and James were the names most favoured by parents of newborn baby boys in 1971. There were 198 newborn boys named John in 2021, compared with 2,654 in 1971.
There were 10 new entrants into the top 100 for boys in 2021: Teddy, Daithí, Páidí, Jaxon, Brody, Ted, Hunter, Tadgh, Tiernan and Arlo.
The boys’ name with the most growth in popularity in terms of rank between 2020 and 2021 was Ted, jumping 49 places from 139th place to 90th place.
There were three new entrants to the top 100 for girls: Indie, Ayla and Lottie. Croía is the girls’ name that has grown the most in popularity in 2021, jumping 43 places from 95th place in 2020 to 52nd in 2021.
Here are the top 100 for last year:
As in previous years, new girls had a wider variety of names than new boys. There were 4,741 girls’ names registered in 2021, compared to 3,863 boys’ names.
The most popular names by county can be searched on the CSO’s website, while another tool shows trends of the most popular baby names each year since the 1960s, allowing people to search for a name and see how they have changed in popularity over the years.
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