According to Eesti Rahvusringhääling (Estonian Public Broadcasting), the most popular baby names in Estonia in 2019 were Mia and Robin.
Here are the country’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2019:
Girl Names
- Mia
- Sofia
- Emily
- Lenna
- Marta
- Alisa
- Hanna
- Maria
- Emma
- Saskia
Boy Names
- Sebastian
- Robin
- Oliver
- Hugo
- Rasmus
- Mattias
- Oskar
- Kristofer
- Mark
- Martin
The last set of rankings I posted for Estonia was the 2014 rankings, which had Sofia and Rasmus at the top.
Source: Robin and Mia most popular baby names in 2019
Updated (3/18/2021) using Popimad nimed 2019 – Sebastian ja Mia.
Image: Adapted from Flag of Estonia (public domain)
Just quick zipping this off at 3 am ;o)
my best friend’s grandfather came from estonia in the 40’s (?) with his wife and son, the son is my best friend’s father. the names i’m curious about Alar (b. 1930s i think), Kalev (b. 1972 usa), and Kanger (surname)
The info I’ve found, in helping with genealogy is a bit confusing. My friend’s father does not remember much of anything.
I’m simply curious if these are common names. I’ve not found much , but I can’t go back that far, even with the LDS sites
I haven’t been able to find any hard data on either of the personal names so far. That said, the Wikipedia page for Kalev lists a dozen famous Kalevs who were all born in the 20th century, so my wild guess is that “Kalev” was at least moderately popular in Estonia throughout the century.
The Statistics Estonia website on names should help a bit: https://www.stat.ee/public/apps/nimed/
As noted on that website, Alar is most commonly used among 50-54 year old men (in other words, those born in the latter half of the 1960s), so your best friend’s grandfather (if that is how I presume he is named) might be ahead of the curve there. Compare that to Kalev, which seems to be most common among men born in the latter half of the 1950s, so by the time your best friend’s father was born, it was already losing a bit of ground. No genealogical info on Kanger, I’m afraid, but the statistical data on that website shows that Kanger is a rather uncommon surname to have in Estonia.
Thank you so much, m4yb3_daijirou, for tracking down all that information! I really appreciate that you would take the time to do that. :)
Also, thank you for leaving the link! I’ve posted the rankings for Estonia before (2013, 2014), but I always had to cite secondary sources — I never had the direct link to the primary source. Very cool!
There are PDFs published by the Ministry of the Interior (hence primary sources in their own right) which show the top baby names since 2012 (2013 was when the top 25 was first shown). I’ve put up the links below:
2012 (top 10): https://www.siseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/dokumendid/Rahvastiku-statistika/10_populaarsemat_eesnime_2012.pdf
2013: https://www.siseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/dokumendid/Rahvastiku-statistika/25_populaarsemat_eesnime_2013._aastal.pdf
2014: https://www.siseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/dokumendid/Rahvastiku-statistika/2014_aasta_25_esimest_eesnime.pdf
2015: https://www.siseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/dokumendid/Rahvastiku-statistika/2015_aasta_25_esimest_eesnime.pdf
2016: https://www.siseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/dokumendid/Rahvastiku-statistika/25_populaarsemat_eesnime_2016.pdf
2017: https://www.siseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/dokumendid/Rahvastiku-statistika/25_popularsemat_eesnime_2017.pdf
2018: https://www.siseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/dokumendid/Rahvastikutoimingud/25_populaarsemat_eesnime_2018.pdf
2019: https://www.siseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/dokumendid/Rahvastiku-statistika/25_populaarsemat_eesnime_2019.pdf
Thank you so much. I’ll dig right into that. I appreciate it very much.
Oh, wow, I didn’t scroll all the way down (lack of sleep, honest!) This is fantastic. My friend will be over the moon. Using basic searches and as i said even the LDS church info I was stumped.
Thank you again!