Names of Ireland IE

CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) records Emily as the commonest given name in Ireland; the names that most distinguish Ireland from the rest of the world are John, James and Michael.

Written in English, Irish.

Population
5.2M
Official registers
1
Name forms recorded
25K
BBuilt from 1 official register (2019), 25,167 name forms in our corpus, 4 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 Ireland are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Ireland included.

How names work in Ireland

2 naming traditions are in use in Ireland, 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 Ireland

Counts children born in the year · authority tier 2
CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present), 2019 — 102 given names counted over children born that year, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Emily452—
2Grace426—
3Fiadh334—
4Sophie330—
5Hannah321—
6Amelia315—
7Ava313—
7Ellie313—
9Ella292—
10Mia289—
11Lucy285—
12Emma27674
13Lily267—
14Olivia263—
15Chloe253—
16Aoife229103
17Caoimhe226—
18Molly218—
19Anna217—
19Sophia217—

Where the two lists disagree

25 of CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) 2019Across all recordsemily: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. emilynot rankedgrace: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. gracenot rankedfiadh: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. fiadhnot rankedsophie: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. sophienot rankedhannah: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. hannahnot rankedamelia: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. amelianot rankedava: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. avanot rankedellie: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. ellienot rankedella: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. ellanot rankedmia: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. mianot rankedlucy: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. lucynot rankedemma: 12 → 74 · ranks lower across all records12. emma74lily: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. lilynot rankedolivia: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. olivianot rankedchloe: 15 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country15. chloenot rankedaoife: 16 → 103 · ranks lower across all records16. aoife103caoimhe: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. caoimhenot rankedmolly: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. mollynot rankedanna: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. annanot rankedsophia: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. sophianot rankedholly: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. hollynot rankedfreya: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. freyanot rankedsaoirse: 23 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country23. saoirsenot rankedkate: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. katenot rankedsadie: 25 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country25. sadienot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present), 2019 on the left; every record we hold for Ireland 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 Ireland

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

JohnJamesMichaelRobertBrianAnnPaulSeanNiamhPatrickMarkNiallRichardThomasSusanAoifeCiaranSineadLindaEoinJosephPatriciaKevinKarenDeclanLisaCiaraAislingColmLiamJenniferMargaretBarbaraMichelleLauraSiobhanShaneGaryDonaldCarolKieranSeamusEdwardSandraDeirdreSharonCathalAmyOrlaKennethRonanKathleenDonalClaireCianGerardAidanDonnaJeffreyLynn
Sized by how much of the difference between Ireland'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

EmmaSarahAoifeEmilySophie19982019791
CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present), 1998–2019 (22 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)
Michaelgiven name(measured from records)
Jamesgiven name(measured from records)
Robertgiven name(measured from records)
Anngiven name(measured from records)
The best-attested names in Ireland, 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 Ireland?
Emily, according to CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) (2019), with 452 bearers recorded among girls.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Ireland?
Because they count different people. CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present) (2019) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Emily. 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 Ireland?
No — 2 are described on this page (Irish, British), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Ireland”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/IE (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present).