Names around the world

National name records from outside the United States. 16 countries so far.

The names column counts the names an office published, not the names a country uses, and how deep a published list goes is the office's decision rather than the country's: it runs from France’s 49,163 down to Portugal’s 50. So the column is not a comparison between countries. Each country’s own page says exactly where its list was cut off, and they are worth reading before any of these numbers are taken for a measure of anything.

Counts are never added across countries. Each national statistics office defines a recorded name differently, rounds differently and covers a different span of years, so a combined total would not mean anything.

Portugal does not even count the same thing. Portuguese law allows a child two given names, and the register ranks the given names rather than the whole forename, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is counted under Maria and again under Leonor. Its column is name registrations, not children, and is marked as such above.

England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are listed separately because births are registered separately in each; there is no single UK register to draw on. Their years and thresholds differ too, so adding the three would not give a United Kingdom figure.

Some countries publish nothing nationally, and the only records are the ones cities keep - those are under names by city (Berlin, Germany).

A few of these publish the same births broken down by region as well, which is under names by region. Those are the same children counted again, not extra ones.

Some countries publish the names everyone on their register holds instead of births by year - a different question, so they are kept apart under names of the living (the Netherlands, Finland).