The most popular baby names have changed significantly (Image: Getty)
Mary, Susan and Michael are out – Muhammed, Anaya and Alba are in. The most popular baby names in England and Wales have been revealed, with Olivia topping the girls list for the tenth year running and Muhammad, Noah and Leo were the top three for boys.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has today issued a list of the top 100 most popular boys names and girls names for 2025. There’s been movement among the rankings for girls with the top three names revealed as Olivia, Lily and Amelia – with Lily overtaking Amelia for second place.
Olivia was the most popular name in three of nine regions in England and was the favourite for Wales, while Muhammad was the most popular in four of nine England regions and ranked 34 in Wales.
There were 585,396 live births – 284,681 female and 300,715 male – in 2025 in England and Wales.
New additions to the top 100 names include: Eliana, Gracie, Anaya, Alba, Marnie, Lilah and Frankie for girls; and Vincent, Carter, Stanley and Ruben for boys.
Baby Center has a list of the top baby names of 1960 – and in 65 years, there’s a clear difference in the most chosen monikers.
The list shows Mary, Susan and Linda were 1960’s most popular girls’ names, while David, Michael and James were the top boys’ names. Others in the top 10s for each gender in 1960 include Karen, Donna, Lisa, Patricia and James, John, Robert, Mark and William.
In the 2025 figures from the ONS, James has fallen to number 42, William to number 25 and Mark, John and Robert have fallen out of the top 10 entirely.
For girls, Mary has failed to crack the top 100 for 2025, but Maryam is at number 52. Old favourites such as Karen, Donna, Lisa and Patricia are nowhere to be seen in the current top 100.
Of today’s most popular three names – boy or girl – none made an appearance in the 1960’s top 100. Girl names seeing the biggest boom over the past year were Ada, rising 54 places; Maeve, up 24; and Charlotte, by 24. For boys, this was Roman, by 33 places; Harry by 26 and Finley by 25.
The girl names that dropped the furthest down the rankings this year were Jessica, down 44 places; Ellie, falling by 31; and Amelia, decreasing by 22.
There were 2,386 babies born in 2025 called Olivia and 5,957 boys called Muhammad – making up 1.4% of all birth names.
The top 10 names accounted for 9.1% of all births that year. The rankings are produced from the exact spelling of the name given at birth registration and similar names with different spellings are counted separately.