{"id":207336,"date":"2025-12-23T19:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T19:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/207336\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T19:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T19:54:07","slug":"cso-reveals-the-most-popular-christmas-baby-names-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/207336\/","title":{"rendered":"CSO reveals the most popular Christmas baby names \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Holly is no longer the most popular girls\u2019 name for babies born in December after a decade at the top of the table, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">On Tuesday, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/central-statistics-office\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/central-statistics-office\/\">CSO<\/a> released findings on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/christmas\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/christmas\/\">Christmas<\/a> baby names. It found Holly was either the top or joint most popular girls\u2019 name in December for a 10-year period up to 2023 but fell down the rankings in December 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The most popular girls\u2019 names last year were Robyn and Fiadh, both in joint first place with 27 babies receiving each name, followed by Sophie (23), and \u00c9abha and Emily, both at 22. Nineteen girls were called Holly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Of the 148 baby girls named Robyn in 2024, 27 were given that name in December 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In terms of boys\u2019 names for babies born last December, R\u00edan was the most popular with 44 babies born that month being given the name, which means \u201clittle king\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He was followed by Noah (38) and Jack (34). Although there was a drop in the number of Noahs since December 2023 (46 to 38), the name held its popularity and second-place ranking for another year, the CSO found.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In December 2024, there were 82 babies born on Christmas Day, of which 39 were girls and 43 were boys.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">For the year in its entirety, Jack was the most popular boys\u2019 name for the eighth year in a row. But it was replaced by R\u00edan for those born near the festive season. The most popular girls\u2019 name for all of 2024 was Sophie.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Se\u00e1n O\u2019Connor, statistician in the vital statistics section of the CSO, said that  compared to  50 years ago, John was the most popular boys\u2019 name in 1974 but was 29th most popular in 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cFor girls, Mary was the most popular name 50 years ago, whereas in 2024 it ranked joint 105th, alongside Laura and Zoey,\u201c he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/life-style\/people\/2025\/12\/10\/please-stop-wishing-us-december-babies-a-happy-birthmas\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Please stop wishing us December babies a \u2018Happy Birthmas\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThis was only the third time in 50 years that the name Mary did not feature in the top 100 most popular names in Ireland with 46 babies given the name of Mary in 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">James was the only name that appeared in both the top 10 boys\u2019 names lists in 1974 (sixth) and 2024 (fifth).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Holly is no longer the most popular girls\u2019 name for babies born in December after a decade at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9484,14787,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-207336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-christmas","tag-central-statistics-office","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}