About babynames.ie

babynames.ie is an independent guide to baby names in Ireland. Every name page shows how many babies were given that name each year from 1964 to 2025, how to say it, and what it means.

Where the numbers come from

The popularity figures are from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Irish Babies' Names, tables VSA50 (boys) and VSA60 (girls), published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The CSO lists every first name given to 3 or more babies registered in a year. babynames.ie is not endorsed by the CSO.

Northern Ireland figures, from 1997 on, come from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), First Forenames Given to Babies Registered in Northern Ireland, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. NISRA records names without accents.

We cover 5,984 names in all.

How we combine spellings

The CSO counts every spelling separately, and it only began recording fadas in 2018. Before then Rían, Seán and Éabha all appear without their fadas. So each name page adds together the spellings that differ only by fadas, capital letters or hyphens (for example Rían, Rian and Rìan) and shows the breakdown in a table. Genuinely different spellings, such as Eoin and Eoghan, keep their own pages.

The top 100 lists use the CSO's own ranks, spelling by spelling, so they match the official release. Name pages also show a rank with spellings combined, which can differ: in 2025, for example, Fiadh and Fíadh together outnumber every other girls' name.

1998 and earlier

The CSO's figures for 1964 to 1997 come from an older back series that is not directly comparable with the figures from 1998 on. Our charts mark 1998, and the Share view (babies per 10,000 of the same sex) is the fairest way to compare across that line.

Meanings and pronunciation

We write our own name notes from published sources, which are listed on each page. Pronunciations are given as plain-English respellings, with the stressed syllable in capitals, and in the IPA. Irish names can vary by dialect, and we note the main alternatives.