Popular baby names in Spain, 2013

What are the top baby names in Spain?

According to data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, the most popular baby names last year were Lucia and Hugo.

Here are Spain’s top 20 girl names and top 20 boy names of 2013:

Girl Names	Boy Names
1. Lucia 2. Maria 3. Paula 4. Daniela 5. Martina 6. Carla 7. Sara 8. Sofia 9. Valeria 10. Julia 11. Alba 12. Claudia 13. Noa 14. Marta 15. Irene 16. Emma 17. Carmen 18. Laura 19. Ana 20. Ainhoa	1. Hugo 2. Daniel 3. Pablo 4. Alejandro 5. Alvaro 6. Adrian 7. David 8. Mario 9. Diego 10. Javier 11. Lucas 12. Nicolas 13. Manuel 14. Marcos 15. Iker 16. Sergio 17. Izan 18. Jorge 19. Carlos 20. Martin

I found this list via Name News by Clare, who said:

So many names I’d never have guessed (and, in some cases, have never heard of) here, like Alvaro, Ainhoa, Aitana, Leire, Nerea, and Ainara.

I agree. I also didn’t expect to see the boy names Aitor (35th), Asier (58th) or Unai (60th). Or the girl name Africa, which was 68th — way more common in Spain than here.

(Aitana, Leire, Nerea, and Ainara ranked 26th, 28th, 31st and 29th for girls, respectively.)

I haven’t blogged about the top names in Spain before, but I did have a post about the top names in Catalonia last year. Weirdly, I looked up Unai for that post — it’s Basque and means “cowherd.”

Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (via Name News, via Nomes e mais nomes)

Image: Adapted from Flag of Spain (public domain)