THE TOP 100 baby names for boys and girls in 2018 have been revealed by the Central Statistics Office.
Jack and Emily remain the most popular names with only one new entrant to either top five since last year.
The top five names for boys were Jack, James, Noah, Conor and Daniel, while the top five for girls were Emily, Grace, Emma, Sophie and Amelia.
Noah has replaced Sean in the boys’ top five, moving up from sixth place in 2017.
New names in the top 100 for 2018 were Freddie, Frankie and Theodore for boys and Ada, Bella, Bonnie and Ivy for girls.
The list showed that girls are given a wider variety of names than boys, with 4,779 girls’ names registered last year compared to 3,712 boys’ names.
For the first time since 1988 when the CSO began producing the annual list, it has distinguished between names with or without fadas.
For example, while ‘Sean’ made the top 5 last year for boys it is now down in 74th place and ‘Seán’ comes into 13th.
Other names with fadas that made the top 100 are Éabha, Róisín and Oisín.
Conradh na Gaeilge has welcomed the move, adding that it should encourage other state bodies to prioritise making fadas standard.
“We welcome this step forward by the CSO that names with the síneadh fada be included in their databases. We hope this inspires other organisations, and State bodies especially, to follow in updating their systems to ensure the correct spelling of names in Irish,” Julian de Spáinn of Conradh na Gaeilge said today.
The top 100 baby names for 2018
The CSO has also published a map of Ireland showing the most popular baby names across different counties.
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