Names of United Kingdom GB

ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024) records Olivia as the commonest given name in the United Kingdom; the names that most distinguish the United Kingdom from the rest of the world are John, David and Stephen.

Written in English, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, kw.

Population
66M
Official registers
4
Name forms recorded
384K
BBuilt from 4 official registers (2024), 383,915 name forms in our corpus, 10 cited works.

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

The account of the naming system rests on encyclopaedia and genealogy sources; it has not yet been checked against onomastic literature.

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

How names work in United Kingdom

3 naming traditions are in use in United Kingdom, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in United Kingdom

Counts children born in the year · authority tier 2
ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024), 2024 — 100 given names counted over children born that year, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Olivia2.8K—
2Amelia2.4K—
3Lily2.2K—
4Isla2.1K—
5Ivy2K—
6Florence1.9K—
7Freya1.9K—
8Poppy1.9K—
9Ava1.8K—
10Elsie1.7K—
11Isabella1.7K—
12Sofia1.6K—
13Sophia1.6K—
14Mia1.6K—
15Maya1.6K—
16Bonnie1.6K—
17Phoebe1.5K—
18Daisy1.5K—
19Sienna1.5K—
20Evelyn1.5K—

Where the two lists disagree

25 of ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024) 2024Across all recordsolivia: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. olivianot rankedamelia: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. amelianot rankedlily: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. lilynot rankedisla: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. islanot rankedivy: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. ivynot rankedflorence: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. florencenot rankedfreya: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. freyanot rankedpoppy: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. poppynot rankedava: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. avanot rankedelsie: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. elsienot rankedisabella: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. isabellanot rankedsofia: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. sofianot rankedsophia: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. sophianot rankedmia: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. mianot rankedmaya: 15 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country15. mayanot rankedbonnie: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. bonnienot rankedphoebe: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. phoebenot rankeddaisy: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. daisynot rankedsienna: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. siennanot rankedevelyn: 20 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country20. evelynnot rankedwillow: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. willownot rankedharper: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. harpernot rankedcharlotte: 23 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country23. charlottenot rankedrosie: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. rosienot rankedgrace: 25 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country25. gracenot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024), 2024 on the left; every record we hold for United Kingdom 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 United Kingdom

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when United Kingdom 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.

IrvineEastJohnDavidChesterStephenJamesEnglandAndrewIanRobertPaulMarkMichaelPeterRichardWilliamTheChristopherSusan
Sized by how much of the difference between United Kingdom'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

EmmaLauraSarahClaireNicola197420241,266
NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present), 1974–2024 (51 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

Johngiven name(measured from records)
Davidgiven name(measured from records)
Michaelgiven name(measured from records)
Jamesgiven name(measured from records)
Stephengiven name(measured from records)
The best-attested names in United Kingdom, 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

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

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 United Kingdom?
Olivia, according to ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024) (2024), with 2,761 bearers recorded among girls.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in United Kingdom?
Because they count different people. ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024) (2024) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Olivia. 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.
Is there one naming system in United Kingdom?
No — 3 are described on this page (British, Welsh, Manx and Cornish), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of United Kingdom”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/GB (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024).