The names rising in Britain

The fastest rising boys' name in England and Wales last year was Nivan. It climbed 3,653 places, from 5,119th to 1,466th. That is what the rankings say and it is true.

It is also three babies becoming eighteen. The Office for National Statistics ranks every name given to three or more babies, so the bottom of the list is thousands of names tied on a handful of children each, and fifteen more parents can move a name three and a half thousand places. Even at the fifty-baby line we normally draw, the top of the list is Atley, up 1,056 places, which is fourteen babies becoming fifty. Any list of the fastest rising names you read this autumn is probably a list of names like these.

So we did it differently. We hold the ONS files for 2024 and 2025 side by side. We only looked at names given to at least 100 babies in 2025, and we measured the rise in babies, not in places. What comes out is a very different list, and it splits neatly in two.

The girls

The ten girls' names that grew fastest, of the ones with at least 100 babies behind them.

Gia nearly doubled, from 86 babies to 154. The one that matters most is Eliana, because it was already a big name. 416 babies became 736, and that carried it from 116th to 62nd, the highest new entry in the girls' top 100. Nothing else came into the top 100 from further away than 119th.

Fiadh is Irish, and it is one of two names on these lists that do not appear in the American file we hold at all, which goes down to five babies. Robin is on the girls' list because the ONS counts it there, 186 girls last year.

The boys

Vinnie is the Eliana of this list. It was already 91st and it grew by 45% in a year, 585 babies to 851, and is now 58th. We wrote about Vinnie in the Britain and America piece as one of the most British names in the catalogue. Seventeen American babies were named Vinnie in 2017. It is getting more British, not less.

Bear went from 75 to 117. Macsen is Welsh and went from 104 to 141. Dougie went from 120 to 164, and like Fiadh it is not in the American file. Cassian, which we expected to see near the top, is 11th on this measure, up 34% from 118 to 158. Its 80 place jump looked bigger than it was.

Half of it is coming from America

Put the two lists together and look at where each name stands in the United States. Eliana is the 10th most popular girls' name in America. Lainey is 30th. Adriel is 84th. Those are names Britain is catching up on, years after America got there.

Then there is the other half. Vinnie, Dougie, Fiadh, Macsen, Caelan. None of them is in the American top 1,000. Caelan was given to 75 American babies in 2017, the last full year of counts we hold, and it is the fastest growing boys' name in England and Wales. These are Britain doing its own thing, and the thing it is doing is the same one we found in that piece: a nickname on the birth certificate, or a Celtic name that never crossed the Atlantic.

So the risers are two different stories at once. One is America arriving here, on a delay. The other is Britain moving further away from America. Both are in the same year's file.

Inside the top 100

The big names move more slowly, so a 37% rise at the top of the chart is a bigger event than a 79% rise at 293rd. Mabel did it. 1,113 babies became 1,527 and it went from 37th to 16th, the biggest rise by any name that was already in the girls' top 100. Eliana and Vinnie were the other two. On the boys' side Myles went from 87th to 67th and Vincent came into the top 100 at 93rd, up from 118th.

And then there is the other direction, which nobody writes about. Bonnie was the 16th most popular girls' name in England and Wales in 2024, given to 1,583 babies. In 2025 it was given to 882, and it is 48th. That is a fall of 44% in one year for a name that was in the top 20. It is the biggest fall in either top 100 by a distance, and we are not going to guess why.

Jessica fell from 95th to 139th, 483 babies to 360, and is out of the top 100. Ellie went from 88th to 119th. Jaxon fell from 66th to 88th, and Ollie from 101st to 123rd. Ellie and Ollie are the same kind of name as Vinnie and Dougie, a nickname used as a name, so it is not that Britain has gone off the idea. It has just moved on to different ones.

One thing to hold in mind when reading any of this. Both files are a little smaller than the year before, 253,281 girls against 257,986, and 273,652 boys against 277,763. Fewer babies were born. So a name that held its number last year did slightly better than it looks, and a name that fell 2% did not really fall at all. None of the falls above is that kind.

The summary, then. The names rising fastest in Britain are not the ones on the thousand-place lists. They are Gia, Eliana and Lainey arriving from America, and Vinnie, Dougie, Fiadh and Caelan going the other way. And the name falling fastest is Bonnie, from 16th to 48th, which we did not expect and cannot explain.