Every year, hundreds of thousands of parents are spoiled for choice when choosing a name for their newborn children. Some are creative, others follow trends. In 2023, many people have once again chosen the first names Emilia and Noah – the two names top the top ten list of the most popular first names by name expert Knud Bielefeld. “Just like last year. Nothing has changed,” said the amateur name researcher at the German Press Agency in Ahrensburg in Schleswig-Holstein.
Bielefeld published its ranking on Friday and is available to the German Press Agency. Emma and Sophia follow for the girls and Matteo and Elias for the boys.
It is not at all unusual that Emilia and Noah top the lists again. “It’s very typical that such first name fashions develop very slowly, that hardly anything changes over decades.” It could also happen that Noah and Emilia remain number one in the coming years. The two names rose relatively evenly and carefully on the hit list and did not skyrocket like the name Matteo did recently.
Emerging candidates for the future
At the same time, Bielefeld also sees names in its statistics that have had a lot of growth in the past two years and could definitely be candidates for the top ten in the next few years. “Those would be the names Emilio, Fiete, Fritz, Hannes, Leano, Liam, Lino, Lio, Marlon and Theo for the boys and Amalia, Ella, Elli, Hailey, Ida, Lia, Lilly, Lotta, Malia and Rosalie for the girls .” He even clearly sees one name as the favorite. “If I were to bet now, I would bet on Leano.”
Gender-neutral names that can be worn by both girls and boys are also appearing more and more frequently in the lists. This trend has been around for a long time in the USA. Examples of these unisex names include Ashley, Quinn or Taylor. “It’s actually a not that rare boy’s name in Germany. It became more and more popular. Due to the hype surrounding Taylor Swift, who is a singer, it is now also popular as a girl’s name.”
Special features in the federal states
In most federal states, the lists of the top ten first names are similar. As a rule, Emilia, Emma, Sophia and Hannah as well as Noah, Matteo and Emil are in the first five places. In federal states with many large cities such as North Rhine-Westphalia or city states such as Bremen and Berlin, even the name Mohammed makes it into the top ten because a comparatively large number of families with a migrant background live there.
According to Bielefeld’s calculations, half of the children born in Germany have one of the 60 most popular girls’ or boys’ names.
There are always noticeable deviations in Bavaria and Saxony. “These retro names are very popular in Saxony – something like Karl and Gerda, which you don’t know anywhere else.” Bavaria also has a special name landscape that is relatively conservative. “Names like Thomas, Michael and Sabine are still doing relatively well, even though they no longer work in other countries.” Noah isn’t even in the top ten there. Instead, Lukas, Felix and Maximilian are at the top.
Parents in the north are more modern when choosing names
On the other hand, the federal states in the north are much more modern, Bielefeld continued. “The more northerly, the more modern. First name trends are more likely to be shaped in northern Germany than in southern Germany.” For example, the name Fiete has long played a role in the statistics of Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. “And he’s already conquering Germany quite vigorously. He’s also a candidate who could soon be in the top 10 everywhere.”
When compiling the rankings, Bielefeld also noticed an unusual name – the maiden name Evanna. “That’s a name that I’ve never had in my database before and now I’ve had it several times.” The Ahrensburg resident assumes that this could have something to do with the Irish actress Evanna Lynch, who took on the role of Luna Lovegood in the “Harry Potter” films and published a book in 2021.
For the nationwide evaluation, Bielefeld and his small team used first name data from 412 cities. Almost two thirds of the data comes from registry offices and the rest from baby galleries at maternity hospitals. Bielefeld says it has recorded around 280,000 birth reports. This corresponds to around 40 percent of babies born in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office, 738,800 children were born in 2022. More recent figures were not yet available.
The German Language Society publishes similar first name statistics with, according to its own information, around 90 percent of all data from the registry offices – but later than Knud Bielefeld.
