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

Most published lists give England and Wales together, because that is how the Office for National Statistics headlines the release. The ONS also publishes a Wales-only table inside the same datasets, and it is a noticeably different list. The figures below come from that table, covering births registered in Wales in 2025 and published on 9 July 2026. The final column is the same name's rank in England, which is where the divergence becomes obvious.

Girls

Rank in Wales	Name	Babies	Change since 2024	Rank in England
1	Olivia	140	0	1
2	Lily	116	+8	2
3	Elsie	106	+8	10
4	Mali	104	+9	1118
5	Lottie	99	+2	33
6	Freya	96	-1	7
7	Harper	88	+2	24
8	Florence	87	+7	5
9	Evelyn	85	+9	14
=10	Amelia	84	-8	3
=10	Isla	84	-7	4
12	Hallie	80	+9	29
13	Millie	77	-1	37
=14	Ava	75	+3	11
=14	Poppy	75	-11	6
=14	Willow	75	+9	21
17	Phoebe	73	+4	15
=18	Ivy	72	-12	8
=18	Mabel	72	+25	16
20	Sofia	71	+10	17
21	Rosie	69	+4	25
=22	Arabella	68	+11	22
=22	Isabella	68	-8	9
=24	Grace	63	+13	27
=24	Sophia	63	+24	12
=26	Aurora	62	+2	39
=26	Bonnie	62	-19	48
=26	Mia	62	-7	20
=29	Alys	61	+24	1446
=29	Margot	61	+2	30

Boys

Rank in Wales	Name	Babies	Change since 2024	Rank in England
1	Noah	218	0	2
2	Luca	186	0	4
3	Theo	176	+3	13
4	Arthur	169	0	5
5	Freddie	143	+8	10
6	Oliver	132	-3	6
7	George	131	+5	7
8	Leo	130	-1	3
9	Archie	127	-4	11
10	Osian	114	+7	671
11	Rowan	112	+7	33
12	Macsen	108	+13	903
13	Arlo	104	-4	15
14	Oscar	102	-6	8
=15	Alfie	101	-1	16
=15	Oakley	101	+13	36
=17	Albie	100	-2	22
=17	Elijah	100	-6	23
19	Reuben	95	-4	31
20	Theodore	94	-10	9
=21	Harri	86	+16	1950
=21	Rory	86	+22	18
23	Jude	83	0	14
24	Finley	82	-6	20
25	Hudson	79	+3	43
=26	Henry	76	0	12
=26	Jac	76	+15	2060
=28	Roman	74	-8	28
=28	Tommy	74	-5	44
30	Reggie	73	+11	37

What the England column tells you

Six names in the Welsh top 30 barely register in England

Mali is fourth in Wales and 1,118th in England. Alys is joint 29th in Wales and 1,446th in England. Among boys, Macsen is 12th in Wales and 903rd in England, Harri joint 21st and 1,950th, Jac joint 26th and 2,060th, and Osian 10th and 671st. These are not marginal differences of taste. They are the clearest evidence in the whole ONS release that Wales names its children from a partly separate pool.

Muhammad tops England and sits 34th in Wales

Muhammad was the most popular boys' name in England in 2025 and joint 34th in Wales on 67 babies, though it climbed 23 places there. Wales is a smaller and differently composed population, and the Wales table shows that plainly rather than averaging it away.

Welsh-language names are not confined to Welsh speakers

The Welsh Government's Annual Population Survey estimate of Welsh speakers covers a minority of the population, yet Osian, Macsen, Harri, Jac, Mali and Alys all sit inside the Welsh top 30. Names travel more easily than fluency does, and several of these are anglicised in form as well as sound: Harri and Jac are Welsh spellings of names any English registrar would recognise.

The movement inside the Welsh list is its own story

The ONS prints a change-in-rank column, so movement here rests on two dated points from the same dataset rather than on impression. Mabel rose 25 places to joint 18th and Sophia 24 places to joint 24th; Alys also climbed 24 to joint 29th. Going the other way, Bonnie fell 19 places to joint 26th, Ivy 12 to joint 18th and Poppy 11 to joint 14th, even though Poppy is sixth in England. Among boys, Rory climbed 22 places, Harri 16, Jac 15, and Macsen and Oakley 13 each. Theodore fell 10 places to 20th while Theo rose three to third, which is one sound moving between two spellings rather than a name going out of fashion.

Names below the table worth knowing

Wales-specific names continue well past the top 30. Across England and Wales as a whole in 2025, Ffion was given to 98 girls, Seren to 196, Eira to 112, Nia to 138 and Mabli to 69, while Elis went to 119 boys, Rhys to 106 and Cai to 52. The overwhelming majority of those registrations are Welsh.

How to use this list

Add the spellings together before deciding a name is uncommon. Sofia is 20th in Wales on 71 and Sophia joint 24th on 63; combined, that sound would rank second. Theo is third on 176 and Theodore 20th on 94; together they would lead. The published table ranks spellings, not names.

Read the counts, not just the ranks. The top girls' name in Wales went to 140 babies across the whole country. Choosing from the Welsh top 10 is nothing like choosing from the England top 10 in terms of how often you will meet the name.

Finally, remember what is missing. The ONS suppresses any name given to fewer than three babies, so the rare end of the distribution is longer and more varied than any published table can show.

Most Popular Baby Names in Wales (ONS 2025)