The top names: year by year
Printer-friendly versionThe top names: year by year
Last updated: 17 March 2020
The ‘number one’ babies’ first forenames for each sex for each year are shown in two tables which are available at the foot of this page.
The top first forename for boys was:
- David in 1974 and every year from then until 1992
- Andrew in 1993
- Ryan in every year from 1994 to 1998
- Jack in 17 of the 21 years from 1999 to 2019
- Lewis in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007
The percentage of boys who were given the top first forename has fluctuated from year to year, but overall has tended to decline, having been (e.g.) 5.1 per cent in 1975, 3.1 per cent in 2000, 2.0 per cent in 2015 and 1.7 per cent in 2019. It's lowest level was 1.6 per cent in 2018.
For girls, the top first forename was:
- Nicola in 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1978
- Claire in 1977
- Laura in every year from 1979 to 1989
- Emma in 8 of the 15 years from 1990 to 2004
- Lauren in 1994 and 1995
- Chloe in every year from 1998 to 2002
- Sophie in every year from 2005 to 2013
- Emily in 2014 and 2015
- Olivia in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
The percentage of girls who were given the top first forename has fluctuated from year to year, but is now at its lowest level (1.6% in 2019), having been (e.g.) 2.8 per cent in 1975, 3.9 per cent in 1985, 2.9 per cent in 2000 and 2.7 per cent in 2010.
The files below have been made available as Excel spreadsheets and can be viewed in Comma Separated Value (CSV) or Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF).
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