The most popular baby names in 2021

June 1 marks Global Day of Parents, a day to show our appreciation to parents around the world who dedicate themselves to their children by protecting them and raising them to reach their full potential. While the experience of parenthood varies widely, one commonality is that all parents must choose a name for their child. For the first time, Statistics Canada has compiled a list of the nation’s most popular baby names from 1991 to 2021.

In 2021, the top five baby names for boys were Noah, Liam, William, Leo and Benjamin. For girls, the five most popular baby names were Olivia, Emma, Charlotte, Amelia and Ava.

The vast majority of the top 10 names are pronounced equally well in both English and French, Canada’s two official languages.

For the first time, in 2021, Noah ranked as Canada's most popular name for baby boys. Noah unseated Liam, which was the number one boy name from 2012 to 2020. Noah has biblical roots—namely Noah’s Ark—and originates from the Hebrew name “Noach,” meaning “rest.” Liam is derived from William, a name with Irish roots, meaning “strong-willed warrior” or “protector.”

Olivia has been the most popular girl name since 2016 and ranked first in 10 of the 12 years from 2010 to 2021. Olivia means “olive tree” in Latin and is an old British name dating back to the 13^th century. Previously, Emma—with Germanic roots meaning “universal” or “whole”—was the most popular name for girls, ranking first from 2003 to 2009, and again in 2012 and 2015.

For both boys and girls, the top-ranked names in 2021 represented just over 1 in every 100 babies.

Overall, there is more diversity in the number of girl names compared with boy names. For example, in 2021, there were 25,276 unique girl names registered, compared with 22,076 unique boy names, although many of these were registered once or very rarely. In this regard, more than 85% of first names were rare, that is with a count of fewer than five registrations, representing from 10 to 15% of all babies. The gap between the number of unique girl names and unique boy names has decreased over time.

The diversity of baby names has grown considerably over the study period. In 1991, 33,214 unique baby names were registered. Thirty years later, in 2021, the number of unique names had increased by over one-third (+35%) to 44,782. Several reasons may explain this increase, including the growing cultural diversity in the community and the desire to give a unique first name to one's child.

From 1991 to 2021, the top-ranked boy names changed more year over year than the top-ranked girl names. Over the course of these three decades, eight different names held the rank of most popular boy name: Michael, Matthew, Ethan, Nathan, William, Jacob, Liam and Noah. In contrast, over the same period, five different names ranked first among baby girls: Jessica, Sarah, Emily, Emma and Olivia.

Among boys, 20 first names made the top five over the last 30 years. The number of years they stayed in the top five varied from 1 (Daniel) to 22 (William), with 7.8 years being the average. Along with William, the two names that have lasted the longest are Jacob (19 years) and Matthew (15 years).

Over the same period, 19 names made the top five among girls. On one hand, Megan (not counting variations in spelling, like Meagan, Megane or Meghan) and Taylor stayed for one year. On the other hand, a name that has stood the test of time in the top five is Emma (24 years), just like Olivia (19 years), Sarah (18 years) and Emily (18 years). The average time for a girl name to stay in the top five was 8.2 years.

Interestingly, 6 of the top 10 first names for boys, with the same spelling, are also in the US top 10 for boys (Noah, Liam, William, Benjamin, Theodore, Oliver). For girls, it is 7 of the top 10 first names, with the top 6 and the 8^th (Mia) being identical in spelling and ranking.

We invite you to consult the Baby Name Observatory interactive web application, which contains a search engine to look up baby name popularity for boys and girls and shows the top 20 most popular baby names from 1991 to 2021. Note that for privacy reasons, names with a count of less than five in a given year are excluded from the visualization tool.