The most popular baby names of 2025 have been revealed – but these types of lists have sparked debate about whether new parents should – or shouldn’t – use them as a naming guide.
Are potential names like Lily and Leo at the top of your future baby list? You may want to rethink them if you were hoping that your child will have an ‘original’ moniker.
Welcoming a baby means parents face the responsibility of choosing a name that will last a lifetime.
Ideally, this name will be a unique identifier for that individual child. But this might not be the case if you choose a name that’s highly popular for babies at that moment in time…
New research by modern parenthood app Peanut has revealed the most popular names that have been given to British babies in 2025.
Among the top five names for boys were Theo, Leo, Freddie, Noah and Luca.
For baby girls, the top five started with Lily, followed by Poppy, Amelia, Isla and Freya.
Rounding out the 2025 top 10 baby boys’ names were Arthur, Oliver, George, Archie and Oscar.
New research by modern parenthood app Peanut revealed the most popular names for UK babies in 2025. Theo, Leo and Freddie were the top boys names and Lily, Poppy and Amelia were the top girls names (Picture: stock image)
For baby girls, names ranked six to 10 were Ruby, Ivy, Elsie, Olivia and finally Matilda.
Some parents may take delight in seeing their bub’s name featured among the top-ranked lists of popular names.
But the flipside of choosing a trendy name is that your child is more likely to share it with several of their peers.
Eventually, this may result in them needing to be identified by a nickname, such as an initial from their surname, or by a personal identifier – like a physical trait – to distinguish them from other children with the same name.
A Reddit thread discussed popular baby name lists and whether soon-to-be parents should use them as a guide for choosing names, or, view them as a list of names to avoid in order to minimise the chances of their child having the same name as others.
Among the most vocal responses came from people who had first-hand experience with the pitfalls of being saddled with a hugely popular baby name.
One woman confessed: ‘I grew up with a very common name for my birth year… I absolutely hated it! Kids just started calling me by my last name which is very masculine. I don’t want my kid to have the same experience.’
A similar gripe read: ‘I have a top five name from the 80s and there’s always at least one other person with my name. There were three at my last job. I was always “First name Last Initial” growing up. I gave my daughter a name that isn’t in the top 200.’
A Reddit thread discussed popular baby name lists and whether soon-to-be parents should use them as a guide for choosing names, or, view them as a list of names to avoid in order to minimise the chances of having the same name as others (Picture: stock image)
‘I’m in the top three names for my gender the year I was born,’ another person responded. ‘In third grade there were four of us in my class alone. By high school most of us were going by our last name because it was just easier.’
Others who had been given a popular name said the issues remained problematic even beyond school years.
‘Five of seven women on my team at work have the same name, myself included,’ one female worker said. ‘We are mixed up constantly, getting calls and e-mails about projects others are working on.’
However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Some people who’d been given a popular name added that there were also upsides to it.
‘As someone with a hugely popular name that is always in the top 100, I just want to add that having a really popular easy name is really not that bad,’ the woman said. ‘I never need to spell my name, I can be fairly anonymous and not too easy to track down online.’
‘Sometimes it’s fun when there’s someone else with the same name as you!’ another agreed.
A lady named Jessica added: ‘I always meet other women with my name. My joke is “there’s always another Jessica” and it’s true. I do like my name though.’
People who had been given a popular baby name from the year they were born debated the pros and cons of having the same name as their peers (Picture: stock image)
But others in the Reddit thread – including the person who kicked off the discussion – insisted that you shouldn’t worry too much about the popular baby names lists and just choose what you like.
‘Just name your children the names you like and don’t worry about it. I named my daughter one of the [most popular of the year] names and I don’t regret it,’ wrote the person who started the Reddit post.
Another mother lamented that she had ‘avoided a top five name’ for her daughter – even though she had a deep personal connection to it. She said they still haven’t met anyone with that name – and she regrets not choosing it.
‘Honestly, I think people are far too obsessed with their child not having the same name as someone else in their class,’ another person wrote.
However one person suggested a clever strategy that utilises the annual popular baby names lists to your advantage.
‘We named our kid a name between #100 and #200. We reasoned that the name would be known, spelled right, and pronounced right. Everyone would be familiar with it, but duplicates were unlikely.’
