The most popular baby names in Germany were announced quite a while ago, but I never noticed the press release. Oops.
According to Germany’s Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (Association for German Language), the country’s top names are Luca/Luka for boys and Sophie/Sofie for girls.
Here are the top 10 boy names and top 10 girl names of 2012:
| Boy Names | Girl Names |
|---|---|
| 1. Luca/Luka (1.69% of boys) 2. Maximilian (1.67%) 3. Alexander (1.56%) 4. Paul (1.55%) 5. Ben (1.29%) 6. Leon/Léon (1.29%) 7. Lukas/Lucas (1.26%) 8. Elias (1.25%) 9. Luis/Louis (1.20%) 10. Jonas (1.08%) | 1. Sophie/Sofie (3.28% of girls) 2. Marie (3.22%) 3. Maria (1.58%) 4. Sophia/Sofia (1.50%) 5. Mia (1.48%) 6. Emma (1.39%) 7. Hannah/Hanna (1.27%) 8. Anna (1.23%) 9. Johanna (1.12%) 10. Luisa/Louisa (1.08%) |
So, 17.2% of the baby girls and 13.8% of the baby boys born in Germany last year got a name in the top ten.
Some of the unusual names accepted by the government in 2012 were Fallion, Kirono, Meus, Katte, Ruster and Semea.
Source: GfdS
Image: Adapted from Flag of Germany (public domain)
Note that the GfDS statistics count first given names and further given names in one. So, the first ranks in their ranking are occupied by the most popular second given names!
The statistics by Knud Bielefeld ( http://www.beliebte-vornamen.de/jahrgang/j2012 ) count the first names only and match the percieved name popularity much better.
Thanks for pointing that out, elbowin. A US list that included middle names would look very different too! I am interested to see how many of the top girl’s names (on the first-name only list) are extremely similar. Lea, Lena, Lina, Leonie, Leni, Lara, Laura…it’s almost as bad as Jayden, Cayden and Aiden.
Yes, thanks!
I figured the GfdS’s list was the most official list Germany had to offer, but I wasn’t aware that they smoosh all given names into one category. (Can anyone point out to me where on the website they mention this? I used Google Translate to get the gist of each page, but clearly I missed that rather important detail.)
Here are Knud’s top ten lists, to compare:
GIRLS
BOYS:
I looked around and the way of counting is not stated on the web site of gfds as far as I can see. But it is stated in their paper publication in “Der Sprachdienst” where more information on the most popular names can be found.
Thank you, elbowin!