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Top Northern Irish names

Some features of the Northern Irish names 2018 report

Some 89% of new born boys were given at least one additional name in 2018, with the most popular additional names being James, John, Patrick, Thomas and William. James alone was given to just under 10% of them.

Of the eleven new entries to the top 100 boys' names, Brodie, Cohen, Frankie and Luca made the top 100 for the first time in more than 20 years. On the way out of the Top 100 were Arlo, Cole, Harley, Senan and Toby, each of which made their debut in the list only the year before.

The highest climbers in the Top 100 from 2017 to 2018 were Tommy, Theo and Hunter.

In 2018 some 1,683 name variations appeared in the civil birth registration registers. In 1978, the figure was only 647, demonstrating the much wider range of names parents now select from.

None of the girls' names in the 1978 Top 10 made the 2018 list. (In 1978, Joanne, Lisa, Claire, Emma and Julie were the favourites.) It was the same in 1998, when Chloe, Emma, Rebecca, Amy and Lauren were the most popular names. Just a decade later, they don't make the Top 10. Amazingly, only three names from the 1978 Top 10 - Maria, Emma and Sarah - also appeared in the 2018 list. That's quite a churn!

Of the eleven nerw entries to the top 100 girls' names in 2018, Ada, Fianna, Mila, Myla, Pippa and Savannah made a first appearance in the list since 1997. The highest climbing favourites were Rosie, Sadie and Saoirse.

Sarah, once a top 20 name, was one of the names to fall the greatest number of places since 2017, along with Mya, Rose and Penny.

Northern Irish name changes over the last 150 years  

When compared with Irish first names in 1864, modern children's names have shifted quite considerably over 160 years. For the boys, only five of the old names have survived to the 2018's Top 20 twenty: James, Thomas, Daniel and Matthew.

For girls, there are no exact matches, although Anna is obviously only a slight variation of one of the 1864 Top 20.

But as the two tables below show, Irish name fashions change frequently. In just 22 years, only three of the most popular 10 boys names - James, Jack and Matthew  - remained  in the top spots and none of the girls names held their ground.