Household Names

County’stopbabynamesrevealed

The most popular baby names in Lanarkshire have been revealed.

National Record of Scotland’s annual report revealed the region’s top names for our little bundles of joy.

In North Lanarkshire, Leo and Emily took the top spots in the 2021 list.

Jack, which had been the most popular boy’s name the previous year, came second with last year’s top pick for girls, Olivia, the seventh most popular this year.

In South Lanarkshire, Noah proved the most popular for a boy but Emily also topped the list for a girl.

Again the favourite in 2020, Jack, dropped to second and the girls’ top name, Sophie, to eighth.

Nationally, Olivia has overtaken Isla to become Scotland’s most popular name for baby girls for the second time, according to figures on baby names registered in 2021.

Jack is the most popular name for baby boys for the 14th year in succession, followed by Noah and Leo.

Lyla shot up 56 places in the top 100 girls’ names to 74th overall, while Blake rose 46 places and Rowan 41.

Carson has seen the largest increase in the top 100 boys’ names in 2021, rising 42 places to 83rd, while Struan has jumped 37 places and Myles is up by 35.

Younger and older parents chose different names for their babies. There were only two boys’ names and five girls’ names which featured in the top 10 for both mothers aged under 25 and those aged 35 or over.

Olivia and Noah were the most common names for girls and boys with mothers aged under 25 (same as in 2020).

For mothers aged 35 and over, the most common names were Jack and Emily. The variety of names has increased over time.

For baby girls, there were an average of 181 different names for every 1000 babies, for boys it was 141 names per thousand.

And celebrity names such as Kylian (Mbappe), Margot (Robbie) and Saoirse (Ronan) all proved popular last year.

Director of Statistical Services, Pete Whitehouse, said:“Beneath the headline figures the long term trend is for more names to be used each year, including some names only given to one baby in 2021.

“Almost 12 per cent of baby girls were given a name that no other girl was registered with in 2021.

“Almost nine per cent of boys had unique names for births last year.

“Together with the growing range of names being used this means it’s far less common for children to share their name with their classmates than it was for their parents or grandparents.”

With NRS running this year’s census, Whitehouse took the opportunity to appeal to parents to take part.

He added: “I know the parents of young children, particularly those with babies, have busy lives but I ask them to make time to fill in the census form and record their growing families in the census.

“Like registering a birth, filling in the census form is a legal responsibility for every household and provides the Scottish Government, councils, the NHS and

many others with data they need to provide services for the whole country from the very youngest to the oldest.”

You can explore the popularity of first names in Scotland over the years with NRS’s interactive app.

NRS also published a list of the most common surnames in the birth, marriage and death registers for 2021.

Smith, Brown, and Wilson have been the three most popular surnames since the first list, which is for 1975, and remained the top three in 2021.