Baby name data sources
& popularity explained.

Which years and regions are in the app?

The ranges below are the years currently offered in Baby Name Matcher’s Trends screen. They describe the app’s coverage; official publishers may have newer releases. Individual names can have fewer available years.

On a small screen, scroll the table sideways to see all columns.

Open Trends in the app, choose a region and year, then choose the girls’ or boys’ list. Tap a name to explore its available history. These lists follow the categories in the source statistics.

What do rank and birth count mean?

Rank is a name’s position in a particular region, year and girls’ or boys’ list. A lower number means a higher position: rank 1 is the most common name in that list. Names can share a rank.

Birth count is the number of babies recorded with that name in the source’s chosen year and area. It is not the number of people of all ages with the name, or the number of parents who like it in our app.

Compare like with like

Keep the region and girls’ or boys’ list the same when comparing names. When comparing years, look at counts as well as ranks: a name can move up the ranking even if fewer babies receive it, because other names have fallen further. Counts also reflect how many births were registered in that place and year.

A national ranking cannot predict how many children with a name will be in your child’s class. Use it to explore your preferences, alongside our guide to choosing a baby name together.

Why is a name or year missing?

• The source may withhold small counts. Publication thresholds and privacy rules vary between agencies and datasets. A missing record is not the same as zero births.
• The name may fall outside the displayed list. Not appearing in a top-100 list does not mean a name was never used.
• Spellings and methods can differ. Check the exact spelling and the source notes before comparing variants. The CSO introduced separate recording of accents and other diacritics in its 2018 names series, which affects comparisons with earlier years. Read its explanation of that change.
• Not every catalogue name has a trend series. A name can be available to browse even when no matching statistics are available for the selected region or year.

If a figure looks wrong, contact support with the name, region, year and list you selected so we can check it against the original source.

Where do meanings and origins come in?

Baby Name Matcher combines a name catalogue with published baby-name statistics. Meanings, origins, pronunciations and nicknames are descriptive catalogue information, separate from official birth statistics. Availability varies, and a name can have more than one spelling, origin or interpretation.

If a meaning or cultural connection is central to your choice, use the app as a starting point and check a reliable language reference or ask someone knowledgeable about that tradition.

Source credits and licences

We import and normalise published records for searching and comparison, associate spellings with catalogue entries, and display available ranks and counts. Our presentation differs from the original tables. Baby Name Matcher is independent and is not endorsed by the source organisations.

United Kingdom

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Sources: Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, linked in the coverage table above. © Crown copyright.

Ireland

Source: Central Statistics Office, Ireland. © Government of Ireland. Statistical information is used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, as described in the CSO copyright policy.

United States

The name catalogue includes names from the SSA national baby-name dataset. Government statistics are public-domain material under the SSA copyright policy. This catalogue coverage does not include US trend charts in the app.