The Department of Foreign Affairs has released a list of the top five baby names for boys and girls in 2017.
Emily has retained the top spot as the most popular name for little girls since 2011. Jack has also been a firm favourite for Irish parents to call their baby boys, and is now back at the number one spot after being briefly surpassed by James in 2016.
Before James topped the list in 2016, Jack had been the most popular name for little boys for the past nine years consecutively.
The top five names are based on passport applications for infants, with the list being released earlier this week by Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Simon Coveney.
Here are the most popular baby names for 2017:
Girls:
1. Emily
2. Emma
3. Aoife
4. Grace
5. Sophie
Boys:
1. Jack
2. James
3. Conor
4. Daniel
5. Adam
Compared to 2016’s top names, we’ve seen a surge in popularity of the names Emma and Aoife for little girls, and Daniel for boys.
The names Amelia, Olivia, and Finn have decreased in popularity this year.
Here are the most popular baby names for 2016:
Girls:
1. Emily
2. Amelia
3. Olivia
4. Grace
5. Emma
Boys:
1. James
2. Daniel
3. Jack
4. Conor
5. Finn
During 2017, a record number of 779,000 passports were issued. 494,297 of these were issued to adults, with 284,887 issued to children.
The highest amount of passport applications outside Dublin came from New York, where 6,345 people applied for Irish passports.
Ever wonder how popular your name is?
The CSO has an interactive tool on their website where you can input your name and see a graph of how popular your name is, along with the number of babies that were called your name between the years 1964 to 2016.
To check it out, follow this link:
http://www.cso.ie/en/interactivezone/visualisationtools/babynamesofireland/
