Spanish Baby Names, With Meanings and Data

What Spain itself is calling its babies

Spain's national statistics institute, the INE, publishes newborn name figures from the birth statistics of the Movimiento Natural de la Población. For babies born in 2024, published in November 2025, the most frequent girls' name was Sofía with 3,325, followed by Lucía with 2,830 and Martina with 2,364. Among boys, Mateo led with 3,289, then Hugo with 2,734 and Martín with 2,693. There were 318,005 births in Spain that year, 0.8 per cent fewer than in 2023.

The INE also maps the leading name by autonomous community, and it is not uniform. Sofía and Mateo lead in much of the country, but María and Manuel lead in parts of the south, Laia and Oihan appear in Catalonia and the Basque Country, and Marc and Martí appear in the north-east. Spain is several naming traditions inside one register.

The British counts below are from the Office for National Statistics datasets for England and Wales, covering births registered in 2025 and published on 9 July 2026. Note that the ONS records names without accents, so Lucía and Lucia are counted together.

Girls

Boys

Two things British lists usually get wrong

Marian names are a whole category, not a curiosity

A large share of traditional Spanish women's names are titles of the Virgin Mary rather than names in the ordinary sense: Carmen, Pilar, Dolores, Rosario, Consuelo, Mercedes, Soledad and Montserrat all began as shorthand for María del something. They read to Spanish speakers as devotional in a way no English gloss conveys, and several are effectively confined to older generations now. Carmen went to 46 girls in England and Wales in 2025 and Pilar to fewer than three.

Diego's meaning is genuinely disputed

You will see Diego confidently glossed as "supplanter", on the assumption that it derives from James through Santiago. That derivation is contested; other scholars connect it to the Latin name Didacus, itself possibly from a Greek word meaning "teaching". A source that gives you one answer without mentioning the argument is overselling what is known.

Hugo is Spain's most Germanic top-three name

Hugo, second among boys born in Spain in 2024 with 2,734, is not Latin at all: it comes from a Germanic element meaning "heart, mind, spirit", carried into Iberia in the early medieval period. It is also by some distance the most used name on this page in Britain, at 1,094 boys in 2025 and the same figure in 2024 — one of the flattest names in the whole ONS file.

The Spanish top three barely register in Britain

Mateo went to 328 boys in England and Wales, Martín to 115 and Martina to 26. Sofía is the exception, because the sound already exists in English. If you want a name that will feel Spanish in Spain and unremarkable in Britain, Elena, Rosa, Isabel and Rafael do that; Martín and Martina will read as deliberate.

What is moving, on two dated points

Comparing the ONS 2024 and 2025 files, Nuria rose from 4 to 15, Alejandra from 3 to 6 and Vega from 5 to 9, and Paloma from 54 to 73, while Pablo fell from 31 to 23 and Ana from 110 to 91. These are small numbers in a thin part of the distribution and should not be read as national trends.

Choosing a Spanish name

Decide about the accent before the registrar does. Lucía, Martín, Sofía and Inés all carry one in Spanish, and dropping it changes the stress rather than merely the appearance. UK registration will accept the accent, but a great deal of British software will not, so expect the name to appear both ways for the rest of the child's life.

Test the name in both languages out loud. Isabel, Elena, Rosa, Ana and Diego survive an English mouth intact. Xavier does not: Spanish gives it a "ch" or "h" sound at the start depending on region, English usually gives it a "z". Neither is wrong, but you should choose which one your family will be using.

If a link to Spain matters, check the INE rather than a list like this one. It publishes both the newborn rankings and the frequency of every name in the resident population, which will tell you whether a name reads as current, as your parents' generation or as your grandparents'.