Cork tots are bucking the trend in baby names.

While Emily and Jack were once again the most popular names chosen by Irish parents for their new arrivals last year, here on Leeside Noah and Hannah were the top choices in the city.

Jack remains number one in County Cork, retaining the top spot across Ireland since 2007 with the exception of 2016 when James was the most popular. Emily has been the most popular name for baby girls’ since 2011.

Among the more unique monikers registered in Ireland in 2019 were Féile, Jorja, Kyrah and Constance for girls and Teidí, Saul, Dexter and Ruán for boys.

“Emily retains the top spot for girls, followed by Grace, Fiadh, Sophie and Hannah.” explains Carol Anne Hennessy, a statistician.

“Jack was followed by James, Noah, Conor and Daniel as the first five most popular names for boys in 2019.”

New entries

According to the CSO tables, girls are given a wider variety of names than boys with 4,814 girls’ names registered compared to 3,725 boys’ names.

“Odhrán with the síneadh fada, Eli, Ruairí and Joey were new entrants into the top 100 for boys in 2019. The boys’ names with most growth in popularity in terms of rank between 2018 and 2019 were Odhrán, with and without the síneadh fada, together with Eli, Kayden and Ruairí.” says Ms Hennessy.

“There were two new entrants to the top 100 for girls: Doireann and Méabh (with síneadh fada). Alexandra, Heidi and Hollie were the girls’ names growing most in popularity with Alexandra moving up 25 places and Heidi and Hollie both moving 20 places in the rankings between 2018 and 2019.”

Surnames

Of the 59,795 live births registered in 2019, 20,356 had unrepeated surnames.

These unique surnames included some double-barrelled surnames, e.g., Driscoll-O’Shea. The top three surnames for births registered were Murphy at 683 (1.1%), Kelly at 567 (0.9%) and Ryan at 450 (0.8%).

We’ve come a long way, baby…

“Back in 1969, John, Patrick, Michael, James and Thomas were the names most favoured by parents of new-born baby boys. There were 209 male new-borns named John in 2019, just over 7% of the number of boys given the name John in 1969.” added Ms Hennessy.

“Interestingly, not one of the top five names for girls appeared in the top 100 names a half-century earlier. Mary, Catherine, Margaret, Ann and Elizabeth were the most popular names for baby daughters in 1969, with 2,182 baby girls named Mary in that year. In 2019, there were 452 baby girls named Emily, 20.7% of the number of girls given the name Mary in 1969.”