Most Popular Baby Names in New Zealand (2025)

The top 30 girls' and boys' names in New Zealand, 2025

These figures come from the Department of Internal Affairs, which registers every birth in New Zealand, and were announced on 9 January 2026. More than 58,000 births were registered in 2025 and 19,457 distinct first names were used between them.

That second number is the important one. New Zealand's naming is unusually dispersed: the top boys' name went to 244 babies and the top girls' name to 179, so the leader accounts for well under one per cent of births. Compare Ireland, where the top boys' name reached 490 in a smaller population.

Girls

Boys

What the 2025 data actually shows

The leaders are stable; the places behind them are not

Noah held first place for a third consecutive year with 244 babies, and Isla, which has been in the top three since 2016, held first with 179. Below them the churn is real. Luca climbed from sixth to second among boys, and Hazel from ninth to fourth among girls. Lucy moved from 26th to 7th, Sadie from 42nd to 19th and Florence from 48th to 25th. Isabella fell from fourth to fifteenth and Harper from seventh to seventeenth.

Two spellings would change the top of both lists

The DIA table ranks exact spellings. Luca at second with 236 and Luka at 43rd with 76 are the same name aloud; together they come to 312, comfortably ahead of Noah. Sophia at 11th with 124 and Sofia at 44th with 73 come to 197, which would put that sound ahead of Isla. Before you conclude that a name is uncommon in New Zealand, add its variants.

The list is a picture of who lives here

Māori names sit inside the published top 100: Maia at 33rd, Kaia at 45th, Manaia at 95th and Malia at 99th among girls; Koa at 52nd and Kiwa at 73rd among boys. So do names that arrived more recently — Zorawar at 76th and Arjan at 100th among boys, both Punjabi. Beauden, at 80th, tracks a rugby career rather than an etymology.

The girls' list moves faster than the boys' list

Compare the two 2024 columns. Among boys, eight of the 2025 top ten were also in the 2024 top ten, and none of the newcomers came from outside the top eleven. Among girls, Lucy arrived in seventh from 26th, Sadie in 19th from 42nd and Florence in 25th from 48th, while Isabella fell eleven places and Harper ten. That asymmetry shows up in almost every registry we have looked at: boys' lists are more conservative and change more slowly, and girls' lists carry more of the churn.

Long-running favourites

The DIA's own tables run back to 1954, which makes New Zealand a good place to see how long a name can last. Olivia first entered the top ten in 1994 and has stayed there every year since; Jack has been in the top ten since 1998. Neither is currently number one, and neither has left. That is the pattern to look for if you want a name that will not date.

How to use this list

Treat these ranks as a guide to what you will hear rather than to how crowded a classroom will be. With 19,457 first names in use across roughly 58,000 births, the average New Zealand name is shared by three babies a year. Even the country's most popular name reaches under one per cent of its sex.

If you are comparing New Zealand with Australia, note that they are separate registries with separate rules, and Australia has no single national list at all — each state registry publishes its own. Do not read an Australian top ten as if it covered New Zealand too.

Finally, the published DIA tables stop at 100. Anything outside the top 100 has no public rank, so "not on the list" means only that a name was outside the hundred most used, not that it was unused.