Baby Names Falling Out of Fashion

The names falling fastest, by each registry's own change-in-rank column

Every figure below is taken from a change-in-rank column published by the registry itself: the "Change in Rank Since 2024" column in the ONS 2025 workbooks for England and Wales, and the "Change in Ranking 2024–2025" column in the National Records of Scotland summary tables. Ireland and the United States publish growth tables but not decline tables, so the Irish and American movements below are the falls the CSO and the SSA describe in their own commentary.

What the data actually shows

The same names are falling in more than one country

Chloe and Emma fall in both England and Wales and Scotland in the same year. Mason, Jacob and Bonnie also appear on both national lists. That kind of agreement between two independent registries is far stronger evidence than a single big drop anywhere. Sophie has now dropped 13 places in England and Wales and, in Ireland, has gone from first in 2024 to joint sixth in 2025 — its first year outside the top five since 2008.

Ten years shows the real decline

ONS publishes a change-since-2015 column as well, and it makes the one-year numbers look tame. Among girls, Scarlett is down 77 places over the decade, Chloe 71, Sophie 52, Lola 47, Emily 41 and Ella 40. Among boys, Logan is down 62, Mason 46, Toby 45, Samuel 43, Riley 43, and Joseph, Daniel and Stanley 38 each. Those are not blips; they are the exhaustion of the naming fashion of the 2000s and early 2010s.

Falls have a floor that rises do not

A name can rise by a thousand places, because the bottom of a published list is far away. It can only fall until it leaves the list. That asymmetry is why the biggest numbers on any faller table are always smaller than the biggest numbers on a riser table, and why fallers get less coverage. The names dropping out of a top 100 altogether are invisible in the change column, because there is no rank left to report.

Two long-run examples worth knowing

In Ireland, Mary was the most popular girls' name in 1975. In 2025 it ranked 112th with 41 babies, only the fourth time in fifty years that it has been outside the top 100. In the United States, the SSA singled out Ava leaving the top ten in 2025 after years inside it, replaced by Eliana at tenth. Both are reminders that a name at the very top of a chart is not safe there.

A fashionable name can fall while still being popular

Luna fell 11 places in England and Wales in 2025 and still ranks 59th; Maya fell 13 and still ranks 28th; Millie fell 9 and still ranks 36th. Direction of travel and current position are different facts. A name can be simultaneously very common and clearly on the way down — which is arguably the worst combination if you want a name that ages well.

How to use this list

Do not treat this as a list of names to avoid. A falling name is often a name that has stopped being over-used, which is exactly what many parents say they want. Chloe, Emily, Sophie and Thomas are not damaged by a decade of decline; they are simply less crowded than they were.

Do use it to spot names that will read as of-their-moment. Jaxon, Mason and Hunter are falling in more than one registry at once, and invented respellings are losing ground faster than the names they were built from; names that arrive quickly tend to leave quickly. If you want a name whose position in ten years will be roughly where it is now, choose one whose rank has moved by single figures over a decade, not one at either extreme.

Finally, remember that all these tables rank exact spellings. A name can appear to fall simply because parents have shifted to a different spelling of the same sound, splitting its count across two entries. Check the variants before concluding that a name is going out of use.