Top 100 in one country, nowhere in the other

Take the hundred most popular boys' names in England and Wales and the hundred most popular in America. Put them side by side. 42 names are on both lists. The other 58 on each list are not on the other one at all.

For girls it is an even split. 50 names shared, 50 on one list only. Across both sexes, 108 of the 200 names in one country's top 100 are missing from the other's. Two countries, one language, and more than half the list is different.

We wrote about the most lopsided names last week, the ones hundreds of times more common per head on one side of the Atlantic. This is the wider question. Not which names are most British or most American, but how much of the everyday top 100 the two countries share at all, and what the missing half looks like.

The top of America's list is British. The top of Britain's is not American

The chart shows each top 100 in order, first place on the left. A dark bar is a name that is also in the other country's top 100. A hollow one is not.

Read the American boys' strip and the pattern is plain. Of America's top 20 boys' names, 18 are British top-100 names. The two that are not are Mateo, eighth in America and 160th here, and Levi, 12th and 107th. The bottom half of the American list is where the two countries part company: only 10 of the names from 51st to 100th are in the British top 100.

Now read the British strip. There is no such pattern. Of Britain's top 20 boys' names, only eight are in the American top 100, and the British top ten has four names America does not put in its top 100 at all: Muhammad at number one, George at seven, Oscar at eight and Freddie at ten. America's top ten has one name Britain leaves out, Mateo. The girls are the same story, softer. All ten of America's top ten girls' names are in the British top 100. Only six of Britain's are in the American one. Florence, Freya, Poppy and Elsie, fifth to eighth in England and Wales, are 391st, 176th, 292nd and 123rd in America.

So the two countries do not disagree evenly. America's favourite names are names Britain also likes. Britain's favourite names are, quite often, names America has never heard of.

Seventeen British names America does not use

Being outside the other country's top 100 is one thing. Being outside its top 1,000 is another. The American rankings run to a thousand names for each sex, and 17 names in the British top 100 are not on that list. Here they are, with the number of American babies who got the name in 2017, the last full year of American counts we hold.

Freddie is the one to stare at. Tenth most popular boys' name in England and Wales, 2,526 babies, and in the whole of the United States, a country with six times the births, 76. The three names at the top of this table are a set: Freddie, Alfie, Albie. Then Reggie, Ronnie, Vinnie, Bobby. Britain puts the short form on the birth certificate, America does not, and we said as much last week. What this table adds is how far it goes. Seven of the nine British boys' names that America does not rank are short forms.

Count across the whole list of 58 and it is the same. Archie, Charlie, Louie, Teddy, Tommy, Sonny, Frankie, Harry and Toby are in the British top 100 and outside the American one too. That is 16 short forms among the 58 British boys' names America leaves out. For girls it is Rosie, Lottie, Evie, Maisie, Gracie, Darcie, Marnie and Frankie again.

The other two are the opposite kind of name. Rupert and Ralph. Old, formal, and given to 27 and 184 American boys respectively in 2017. They have company further up the British list. George is seventh here and 126th in America. Edward is 31st and 224th. Albert 57th and 614th, Alfred 76th and 840th, Stanley 98th and 863rd. The girls' side is fuller still: Florence, Mabel, Matilda, Ada, Olive, Harriet, Nancy and Ottilie are all in the British top 100, and the best any of them does in America is Olive at 197th.

Then there is a third group, seven boys' names and two girls'. Muhammad, Mohammed, Mohammad, Yusuf, Musa, Ibrahim and Yahya are British top-100 boys' names, and Maryam and Fatima are top-100 girls' names. None is in the American top 100. Muhammad is number one here and 239th there. That is a story of its own and we will come back to it.

Eighteen American names Britain does not use

The other way round. The British file lists every name given to three or more babies, so we can put a count against all of these. 18 names in the American top 100 sit outside the British top 1,000, which in 2025 meant roughly 30 babies or fewer.

Walker is the Freddie of this list. 78th most popular boys' name in America. Nine boys in England and Wales. Waylon, 56th, got ten. Bennett, 40th, got 18. Weston and Everett got 22 and 24. Every one of those is a surname, and so are Kennedy, Emery and Kinsley on the girls' side. Kinsley is 93rd in America and went to seven British girls.

The second group is Spanish. Jose, Gael, Emiliano and Angel are all in the American top 100 and all under 25 babies here. Eithan is 97th in America, up from 850th in 2019, and went to 11 boys in England and Wales. Camila is 19th in America and 32 babies here. Further up the American list, still outside the British top 100, are Mateo, Santiago at 26th, Thiago at 50th, Valentina at 35th and Gianna at 33rd.

The third group is the one that surprised us. Claire and Caroline are in the American top 100 and went to 23 and 25 babies in England and Wales. They are not the only classics on the American list that Britain has quietly dropped. John is 23rd in America and 174th here, 296 babies. Matthew is 32nd and 153rd. Luke 33rd and 131st. Andrew 73rd and 334th. Christopher 68th and 203rd. Robert 92nd and 164th. Abigail 41st and 171st, Hannah 56th and 105th, Sarah 90th and 131st.

Put the two tables together and you get a neat reversal. Britain has gone back a hundred years for its names and America has kept the ones that were there all along. George, Edward, Albert, Alfred, Florence, Mabel and Ada are British top-100 names and not American ones. John, Matthew, Andrew, Robert, Sarah and Hannah are American top-100 names and not British ones. We can show you that this is so. We cannot tell you why, and we are not going to guess.

One name on the American table needs a note. Ailany is 14th in America and was given to four girls in England and Wales. In 2023 it was 855th in America. In 2024, 101st. Now 14th. Our American counts stop in 2017, long before any of that, so we cannot tell you how many babies that is. We can tell you that no other name in the American top 100 has moved half as far in two years. The next biggest climb is Eithan, 370th to 97th.

The ones on their way

A name in one country's top 100 is often somewhere in the other country's top 300, and some of them are moving. Of the 58 British boys' names outside the American top 100, 17 are inside its top 200. Adam is 101st in America, one place short. Vincent is 107th, Austin 113th, Jaxon 115th and Harrison 116th.

Some British names have climbed a long way in America in ten years. Margot was 593rd in America in 2015 and is 102nd now. Arlo went from 500th to 148th. Hallie 565th to 120th, Mabel 578th to 201st, Elsie 386th to 123rd, Freya 416th to 176th, Maisie 625th to 233rd, Rosie 774th to 283rd. None of them has arrived. All of them are closer than they were.

Going the other way, Cooper is 27th in America and 105th in England and Wales, up from 139th the year before, 384 babies to 493. Five more places and it is on both lists. And one name fell off. Grayson was 90th in England and Wales in 2024 and is 104th in 2025, 586 babies down to 499. It is 51st in America.

A word on the years

The rankings on both sides are the latest available: the 2025 file for England and Wales and the most recent American release. The American counts, where we quote them, are from 2017, because that is the last full national file we hold. So when we say 76 American boys were called Freddie, that is 76 in 2017. The ranking that puts Freddie outside the American top 1,000 is current. The two agree, which is why we are happy to print both.

The British counts are all 2025, and the British file goes down to three babies, which is how we can tell you that nine boys in England and Wales were called Walker. We would not read anything into the exact rank of a name given to nine babies, and we have not. The count is the fact.