Royal Baby Names, With 2025 Popularity Data

How royal names rank in 2025

Royal names are unusually well represented at the top of the British lists. Arthur was fifth among boys in England and Wales in 2025 and George seventh, with Henry thirteenth, according to the Office for National Statistics datasets published on 9 July 2026. Charlotte was twenty-fifth among girls.

Boys

Girls

What the data actually shows

The royal names doing best are not the ones on the throne

Arthur, the most used name on this page, has never belonged to an English or British monarch. Frederick, at 954, belonged to a Prince of Wales who died before he could reign. Charles, borne by the current king, went to 437 boys — exactly the same count and the same 119th place as in 2024, about as flat as a name gets. That is the pattern across the whole file: the royal names people choose are the ones that sound old and English, not the ones currently in use at the palace.

The gap between the two lists is enormous

Arthur went to 3,211 boys and Eugenie to 4 girls. Both are royal names in exactly the same sense. Whatever is driving the choice of Arthur, George and Henry, it is not royalty as such, because royalty is equally available to Eugenie, Anne and Margaret and has done nothing for them. The men's side of the royal name pool overlaps almost completely with the general English revival of nineteenth-century names; the women's side does not, and that asymmetry is the most striking thing in the whole comparison.

A royal birth moves a name, but less than you would think

Louis and Charlotte are both in the top 50 for their sex, and both belong to children of the Prince of Wales. But George was already climbing before 2013, and Arthur's rise has run steadily for a decade with no royal prompt at all. The safest reading of two dated ONS points is that royal names sit inside a broader revival of Edwardian and Victorian names rather than driving it.

Some royal names have simply not crossed over

Eugenie went to 4 girls, Anne to 30 and Margaret to 98. Zara, at 625, is much more used than any of them, but almost none of that is royal in motivation: it is an Arabic and Hebrew name that happens to be shared with a granddaughter of Elizabeth II. A royal association is not, on this evidence, worth very much on its own.

How royal naming actually works

British monarchs choose a regnal name, and it need not be their first name. George VI was christened Albert and reigned as George. Victoria was christened Alexandrina Victoria. There is no rule requiring a monarch to use their given name, which is why the pool of regnal names is much smaller than the pool of royal given names.

Succession is governed by statute rather than custom. The Act of Settlement 1700 fixed the line, and the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 removed male-preference primogeniture for anyone born after 28 October 2011 and ended the disqualification for marrying a Roman Catholic. That is why Princess Charlotte kept her place ahead of her younger brother, and it is a genuinely recent change.

Scotland reads the same names differently

National Records of Scotland published its own 2025 figures on 26 May 2026, and the royal names sit differently there. James was fourteenth in Scotland with 199 babies and Arthur nineteenth with 158, while George does not appear in the Scottish top 30 at all. The Stuart names have a separate history north of the border, and a single "royal names" list that assumes one British public misses it.

Choosing a royal name

Expect the short form to do most of the work. George, Henry, William, Edward, Charlotte and Elizabeth all shorten, and in practice the shortened form is what the child will be called. If Harry, Ted, Bill, Lottie or Betty would irritate you, the full name will not protect you.

Decide whether the association is the point. Arthur, Frederick, Beatrice and Adelaide read as period names rather than royal ones to most British ears, and that is why they are doing well. Diana, Eugenie and Camilla read as specific people. The first group ages more quietly.