Ireland’s Central Statistics Office has released the most popular baby names in Ireland for 2022 for Irish children with Jack retaining the top spot for boys while Emily regains first place for girls in 2022.
From an analysis of the 57,542 live births registered in 2022 by Ireland’s Central Statistics Office (CSO), Jack has achieved the number one spot for the 19th time. Jack has held this position since 2007 with the exception of 2016, when James held the number one spot. Emily has taken the number one spot, climbing from third place in 2021 and 2020. Fiadh held the number one in 2021 with Grace holding it in 2020. Prior to this, Emily had held the number one spot for the most popular name for baby girls since 2011.
Noah, James, Rían and Charlie make up the rest of the Irish baby names for boys’ top 5, with Grace, Fiadh, Sophie and Lily completing the girls’ list.
John, Michael, Patrick, David and James were the top 5 boys names fifty years ago, but not a single one of today’s 10 most popular girls’ names were even in the top 100 in 1972. Back then the top 5 names were Mary, Catherine, Margaret, Fiona and Sinead.
John and Mary were the most popular names in 1972. Now 50 years later, John has dropped to 36th place in popularity for baby boys. Mary has regained a place in the top 100 to take the 87th place after slipping out of the top 100 in 2021 to 127th place.
For boys there were two new entrants to the top 100 names. Blake in at 94th place and Cody at 97th place.
Tomás saw the largest jump in popularity amongst Irish baby names for boys, up from 119th place in 2021 to 77th in 2022.
There were four new entrants to the top 100 Irish baby names for girls in 2022 with Hailey, Phoebe, Ayda and Éala. Éala grew the most in popularity, with a rise from 177th place in 2021 to 91st in 2022, a jump of 86 places in rank.
Top 25 babies’ names registered in 2022, in order of popularity, with corresponding rank between 2021 and 2022
CSO figures show girls are given a wider variety of names than boys with 4,966 girls’ names registered compared to 4,016 boys’ names in 2022.
The Effect of the Síneadh Fada on the Baby Names Stats
Since the introduction of the síneadh fada and other diacritics in 2018, names like Sean (without the síneadh fada) has always been in the top 100 most popular names for boys. Seán with the síneadh fada is now included in the data and both spellings are treated as 2 separate names since 2018, thus Seán has a rank of 19 whilst Sean has fallen to rank 102 in 2022.
If you would like more information on baby names in Ireland for 2022, including a county-by-county breakdown, then visit the CSO website.
