The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has released statistics on Irish Babies’ Names in 2021. Here are the the names that made the list:
Ireland’s most popular boy names 2021:
- Jack
- Noah
- James
- Conor
- Rían
Ireland’s most popular girl names 2021:
- Fiadh
- Grace
- Emily
- Sophie
- Éabha
Jack has retained the top spot as the most popular boys’ name since 2007 – apart from in 2016, when James took the lead. Rían has made it into the top five list for boys, dislodging Daniel, which was number four in 2020. The other four names have all appeared consistently on the list since 2018, with some going back even further.
For the first time, Fiadh (meaning ‘deer’ in Irish) has climbed up to the top spot for girls, after ranking third in 2019 and second in 2020. The names Grace, Emily and Sophie have all made the top five list every year since 2016. The Irish name Éabha has replaced its counterpart, Ava, which made it into the top five in 2020.
It’s clear that girls are given a wider variety of names than boys, with 4,741 girls’ names registered in 2021 compared with 3,863 boys’ names.
Looking back half a decade to 1971, John, Michael, Patrick, David and James were the top names for baby boys in Ireland. There were only 198 boys named John born in 2021, compared with 2,654 in 1971.
None of the top five names for girls in 2021 appeared in the top 100 names 50 years earlier. Mary, Catherine, Margaret, Fiona and Sinead were the most popular names for girls in 1971, with 1,907 girls named Mary that year. In 2021, there were 424 baby girls named Fiadh, just 22.2% of the number of girls named Mary in 1971.