Names of Australia AU

Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) records Isla as the commonest given name in Australia; the names that most distinguish Australia from the rest of the world are Peter, John and Andrew.

Written in English.

Population
25M
Official registers
4
Name forms recorded
177K
BBuilt from 4 official registers (2023), 1 sub-national, 177,287 name forms in our corpus.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Australia are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Australia included.

How names work in Australia

Names in Australia follow one naming tradition. Its structure, its given-name and surname stock, how to address someone and what trips software up are set out on its own page.

The most common names in Australia

Counts children born in the year · authority tier 2

This register publishes counts, not ranks; the numbering is the order of its own figures.

Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM), 2023 — 130 given names counted over children born that year, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Isla1.1K—
2Amelia1.1K—
3Charlotte1K—
4Olivia1K—
5Mia903—
6Ava811—
7Matilda780—
8Harper772—
9Hazel770—
10Grace743—
11Lily741—
12Ella729—
13Evelyn692—
14Ivy679—
15Willow673—
16Isabella664—
17Sophia655—
18Sophie633—
19Chloe632—
20Mila595—

Where the two lists disagree

25 of Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) 2023Across all recordsisla: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. islanot rankedamelia: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. amelianot rankedcharlotte: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. charlottenot rankedolivia: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. olivianot rankedmia: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. mianot rankedava: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. avanot rankedmatilda: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. matildanot rankedharper: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. harpernot rankedhazel: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. hazelnot rankedgrace: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. gracenot rankedlily: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. lilynot rankedella: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. ellanot rankedevelyn: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. evelynnot rankedivy: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. ivynot rankedwillow: 15 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country15. willownot rankedisabella: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. isabellanot rankedsophia: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. sophianot rankedsophie: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. sophienot rankedchloe: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. chloenot rankedmila: 20 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country20. milanot rankedsienna: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. siennanot rankedzoe: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. zoenot rankeddaisy: 23 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country23. daisynot rankedruby: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. rubynot rankedevie: 25 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country25. evienot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM), 2023 on the left; every record we hold for Australia on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Australia

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Australia holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

ThePeterJohnAndrewPalmStephenDavidSydneyJamesSarahKateEmmaMichaelMatthewAnnMarkRobertLouiseRebeccaKylieMichelleIanPaulMareeChrisJaneSusanKarenLaurenHeberJessicaLisaJulieBenAdamAmandaWilliamLeanneElizabethMargaretEmilyNicoleJoanneJasonSamanthaClaireNicholasAnthonyMelissaSimonAmySophieNathanRobynShaneAlisonJenniferCraigRachelSam
Sized by how much of the difference between Australia's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.(measured from records)

Over time

JessicaSarahEmilyMichelleRebecca195220233,232
Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM), 1935–2023 (89 years). The line is that register's own figure for each year — not a total across registers, which would count the same people twice. The publisher labels this series “flow”.

Up to five names at a time.

Scripts & spelling

Thegiven name(measured from records)
Forsurname(measured from records)
Trusteesurname(measured from records)
Trustsurname(measured from records)
Fairfieldsurname(measured from records)
The best-attested names in Australia, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

Sub-national registers

1 register for Australia publishes regional lists only (AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD)). A regional list is not a national one, and summing regions would be an aggregate the publisher never made, so no figure on this page comes from them.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-10-09.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Australia?
Isla, according to Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) (2023), with 1,080 bearers recorded among girls.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Australia?
Because they count different people. Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) (2023) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Isla. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is John. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Australia”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/AU (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM).