Most Popular Baby Names in Scotland (NRS 2025)

The top 30 girls' and boys' names in Scotland, 2025

These are the official figures from National Records of Scotland, published on 26 May 2026 and covering every birth registered in Scotland during 2025. They are counts of registrations rather than estimates: 45,056 babies in all, 23,082 boys and 21,974 girls.

Scotland is a genuinely separate dataset, and it gives different answers from England and Wales. The Office for National Statistics published its own 2025 figures on 9 July 2026, and there the leaders were Olivia and Muhammad. In Scotland they were Freya and Noah. There is no single UK-wide baby names list because there is no single UK registry — NRS covers Scotland, ONS covers England and Wales, and NISRA covers Northern Ireland.

Girls

Boys

What the 2025 data actually shows

Freya reached number one for the first time

Freya has sat in Scotland's top three for three years, but 2025 is the first year it has led, with 268 babies. Olivia, which had held the top spot, fell to third on 251. The three names at the top are separated by 17 registrations, so this is a narrow result rather than a landslide, and it could easily reverse.

The boys' top four rearranged itself around a stable leader

Noah held first place with 318 babies and has been in Scotland's top three every year since 2020. Behind it the order changed sharply: Luca climbed four places to second on 302, Rory held third on 301, and Muhammad slipped from second to fourth on 291. Twenty-seven registrations separate first from fourth.

The names that climbed and fell hardest

NRS publishes its own change-in-ranking column in the summary tables, which is the honest way to read movement. Among girls the biggest climbers inside the top 100 were Lilly and Matilda, both up 55 places to 83rd and 93rd, then Darcy up 52 to 100th, Margot up 45 to 79th and Quinn up 41 to 79th. Among boys, Vinnie rose 70 places to 95th, Cooper 42 places to 79th and Ruaridh 33 places to 52nd.

Going the other way, Chloe fell 44 places to 83rd and Emma 41 places to 94th; Violet and Eden each fell 23, and Bonnie fell 21 places but still finished 32nd. Among boys Leon dropped 41 places to 97th, Ollie 22, David 21 and Luke 20.

Scotland's own names remain Scotland's own

This is the most useful thing in the data if you live outside Scotland. Eilidh ranks 28th in Scotland with 119 babies but 1,454th in England and Wales with 21. Harris is 10th in Scotland and 396th in England and Wales. Brodie is 15th and 158th. Finlay is 9th in Scotland; the Finley spelling is the common one south of the border. Struan, at 111th in Scotland, was given to two or fewer babies in England and Wales and so does not appear in the ONS list at all.

The -ie ending is at a record high

NRS tracks this directly. In 2025, 13.41 per cent of Scottish girls and 7.97 per cent of boys were given a first name ending in -ie — 4,785 babies, or 10.62 per cent of all births, the highest share in the series, which runs back to 1974. Millie, Rosie, Maisie, Evie, Hallie and Lottie are all in the girls' top 30, and Archie, Freddie, Charlie, Alfie and Albie in the boys'.

How to use this list

Add the spellings together before you decide a name is rare. NRS ranks the exact spelling given at registration. Sophia sits 9th with 181 babies and Sofia 17th with 142; combined they come to 323, which would put that sound ahead of Freya at the top of the whole list. Ruaridh at 52nd with 80 and Ruairidh at 73rd with 67 would together rank about 24th. The published table is a ranking of spellings, not of names.

Read the counts as well as the ranks. The most popular boys' name in Scotland went to 318 of 23,082 boys, about 1.4 per cent, and the most popular girls' name to 268 of 21,974, about 1.2 per cent. Choosing from the top ten does not mean your child will share a name with anyone in their class.

Finally, note what is missing. NRS suppresses any name given to two or fewer babies in Scotland in the year, under an exemption in the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. The rarest end of the distribution is therefore longer and more varied than the published file can show.