How popular is the baby name Ganni in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Ganni.

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Popularity of the baby name Ganni


Posts that mention the name Ganni

Popular baby names in Malta, 2023

Flag of Malta
Flag of Malta

Last year, the Mediterranean island nation of Malta welcomed 4,204 babies — 2,042 girls and 2,162 boys.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Emma and Matteo.

Here are Malta’s top 4 girl names and top 4 boy names of 2023:

Girl names

  1. Emma
  2. Valentina
  3. Julia
  4. Nina

Boy names

  1. Matteo
  2. Noah
  3. Luca
  4. Jack

And what about Maltese names specifically?

For the second year in a row, the top picks were Lucija (pronounced loo-chee-ah) and Ganni (pronounced jah-nee) — the Maltese forms of Lucia and John. Here’s how they’re written in Maltese orthography:

Maltese names Lucija and Ganni

(That diacritic mark is called an “overdot.”)

In 2022, the top names (overall) in Malta were Mia and Luca.

Source: “Ganni and Lucija remain the most popular Maltese baby names.” Times of Malta 17 Jan. 2024.

Image: Adapted from Flag of Malta (public domain)

Popular baby names in Malta, 2022

Flag of Malta
Flag of Malta

The island nation of Malta is located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Italy and Libya.

Last year, Malta welcomed 3,978 babies — 1,962 girls and 2,016 boys.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Mia and Luca.

Here are Malta’s top 4 girl names and top 4 boy names of 2022:

Girl Names

  1. Mia
  2. Emma
  3. Nina
  4. Giulia

Boy Names

  1. Luca
  2. Liam
  3. Noah
  4. Matteo

And what were the two most popular Maltese names?

Here’s how they’re written in Maltese orthography, with the overdots:

Maltese names Lucija and Ganni

Lucija (pronounced loo-chee-ah), the equivalent of Lucia, was given to 13 baby girls. Ganni (pronounced jah-nee), the equivalent of John, was given to 22 baby boys

Finally, here are Malta’s 2021 rankings, if you’d like to compare last year to the year before.

Source: “Most popular names in Malta in 2022 were Luca and Mia.” Malta Daily 11 Jan. 2023.

Image: Adapted from Flag of Malta (public domain)

Popular baby names in Malta, 2021

Flag of Malta
Flag of Malta

According to the news site Malta Daily, the Mediterranean island nation of Malta welcomed 4,164 babies last year.

Malta’s top baby names of 2021 were…

Girls Names

  • Emma
  • Mia
  • Ella
  • Valentina
  • Emily

Boy Names

  • Matteo
  • Luca
  • Noah
  • Adam
  • Jake

My source wasn’t explicit about the rankings, so I’ve ordered them here the way they were ordered in the article. I’m guessing that Emma and Matteo were the top choices.

Malta’s government finally began registering Maltese names in late 2020, thanks to a software upgrade that included Maltese font, so the 2021 rankings are the first to take Maltese orthography into account. The four most popular Maltese names last year were…

Maltese names Guze, Ganni, Eliza, Lucija

(These are the Maltese equivalents of John, Joseph, Elizabeth, and Lucia.)

Back in 2018, the top two names in Malta were Emma and Noah.

Sources: What were the most popular names for Maltese babies in 2021?, Ganni becomes first baby named using Maltese fonts after IT system change

Image: Adapted from Flag of Malta (public domain)

Malta to allow Maltese baby names

Flag of Malta
Flag of Malta

Yay for Malta!

Years ago, I mentioned that Malta was the only nation I knew of in which parents were not allowed to register baby names in the national language.

Why couldn’t they? Because Malta’s government IT systems could not handle Maltese font.

But “a collective overhaul across government IT systems [is now] being done to ensure Maltese orthography is accepted across the board,” and Malta will soon be allowing parents to officially bestow traditional Maltese names.

Maltese, a Semitic language that descended from Sicilian Arabic, has six letters that English doesn’t have. One of them, ie, is easy enough to replicate on a computer; the other five (below) are not.

Here’s how to pronounce them, roughly:

  • C-with-a-dot makes a ch-sound
  • G-with-a-dot makes a j-sound (without the dot, G makes a g-sound)
  • Gh-with-a-line is silent*
  • H-with-a-line makes an h-sound (without the line, H is silent)
  • Z-with-a-dot makes a z-sound (without the dot, Z makes a ts-sound)

Without these letters, a large number of traditional Maltese names are unable to be rendered properly.

(I would love to list some of those names, but, ironically, I can’t — my blogging software doesn’t handle special characters very well.)

Anyway…well done, Malta! I’m proud of you. :)

P.S. More on the silent letters: “Maltese orthography continues to reflect the presence of some letters that are no longer pronounced in order to indicate semantic provenance — a convenience that makes it possible, among other things, to look up words in the dictionary under the three-consonant root (as one does with Semitic languages).”

Update, 6/13/20: Here’s an image of a list of traditional Maltese names…

Maltese baby names

The list above includes Maltese names that are equivalent to: Angelo, Beatrice, Francis, Elizabeth, Jacob, James, George, Juliet, Justin, Joseph, John, Hilda, Lucia, Luigi, Theresa, and Vincent.

P.S. While gathering these names, I happened to find out that the surname Buttigieg — as in former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg — is Maltese and means “poulterer.” Specifically, it comes from a pair of Sicilian Arabic words meaning “father, master, owner” and “fowl.”

Update, 1/2/21: “A baby boy called Ganni is the first child to be officially named using Maltese fonts after an IT system change that recognises letters in the national language” (Times of Malta, Dec. 23). Of course that uppercase G-with-a-dot won’t render correctly in this post, though, so here’s an image:

Maltese name Ganni

It’s the Maltese equivalent of John.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Flag of Malta (public domain)