935 registered babies
Names Change Places
Compare Scotland's most-used baby names across two birth years.
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How to explore
Families choose one name at a time. Scotland's birth register shows how those choices add up to shared patterns that can change across generations.
Choose two years
Start with 1974 and 2025, or move either year to make a closer comparison.
See who stayed
Compare the two top-name lists and select a name to follow its recorded path.
Compare the alphabet
Look for first letters that gained or lost share between the selected years.
Check the cutoff
Finish with the published-list view and limits before treating a missing name as unused.
- Rank
- A name's place after published names are ordered by how many registered babies received it; rank 1 is the most used.
- Published name
- A first name given to at least three babies of the same recorded sex in one year; smaller counts are left out to protect privacy.
- Top 100
- Every published name ranked from 1 through 100; ties can put more than 100 names in the group.
- First-letter share
- The percentage of babies represented in the published file whose recorded first name begins with a given letter.
Scotland · births registered from 1974 to 2025Names change
Names change
places
Compare Scotland's most-used baby names across two birth years.
A first name is one family's choice. Thousands of choices become a shared pattern. Scotland's register lets us see which names held their place, which arrived, and which moved out of view.
Choose who and when to compare
Every view follows these choices. Pick the names recorded for boys or girls, then set an earlier and later birth year.
Names recorded for
Which names kept a top-100 place?
The two lists show the 20 highest-ranked girls' names in each year. Select a name to follow its full recorded path.
3
of the top 100 names in 1974 also appear in the top 100 in 2025.
1974Nicola was number 1
- Outside the 2025 top 100
- Outside the 2025 top 100
- Outside the 2025 top 100
- Outside the 2025 top 100
- Outside the 2025 top 100
- Outside the 2025 top 100
- Outside the 2025 top 100
- Outside the 2025 top 100
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- Outside the 2025 top 100
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2025Freya was number 1
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
- Outside the 1974 top 100
How to read this: rank 1 is the most-used published name for that sex and year. Lime marks a name that appears in both top-100 lists; coral marks a later top-20 name outside the earlier top 100. A different spelling counts as a different name.
Follow one name through 52 years
Choose any name that reached the top 100 at least once. The line shows its published rank in every year where at least three babies shared it.
Fewer than three babies, or none, in the published file.
How to read this: higher means a more-used name; number 1 sits at the top. A break means the name was missing from the published file or outside the top 100. Changing either year moves the highlighted dots and updates the exact counts above.
Which first letters gained room?
Each pair of bars counts babies in the published file whose name starts with that letter. The heights compare shares, so years with different numbers of births can sit together.
19742025
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
L led in 1974, with 12.8% of babies represented in the file.
A led in 2025, with 13.7%.
How to read this: compare the two bars above one letter, then scan for the tallest pair. Names used by one or two babies are not published, so these are shares of the registrations represented in the source file rather than all births.
More names now clear the privacy cutoff
The source publishes a name only when at least three babies of the same recorded sex received it that year. This view counts those published names, not every distinct name used.
names used by at least three babies
names used by at least three babies
How to read this: taller bars mean more names reached the three-baby publication cutoff. Select a bar to make it the later comparison year. The change can reflect the number of births, the spread of name choices, and the cutoff; this record alone cannot separate those effects.
The same name can belong to many babies. Counts describe registered first names, not the later identity or language of any person.
Callum and Calum are separate entries. Accents are combined, and a hyphenated first name stays together.
A rise can happen alongside culture, migration, family tradition, or chance. The file does not tell us why parents chose a name.
How the data was prepared
I used the National Records of Scotland file covering 1974–2025, pinned through TidyTuesday. The checked source has 74,331 published name-year rows.
The page keeps the top 100 for each year, annual first-letter totals, annual published-list size, and full histories for the 613 names that reached the top 100 at least once.
The source leaves out names used by fewer than three babies. The chart never turns a missing row into zero and makes no request to another site while you use it.
Why this exists
The question
How much did Scotland's published baby-name rankings, first-letter mix, and number of names meeting the privacy cutoff change between any two years from 1974 through 2025?
What to try
Choose names recorded for boys or girls and two birth years; the paired top-name lists, selected-name history, first-letter comparison, and published-list timeline update together.
Method and limits
About the data
I selected National Records of Scotland's Babies' First Names 2025 release after finding the UK baby-name files in TidyTuesday's 2026 catalog. I opened the official publication, its four-page statistical methodology, the complete 1974–2025 download, and the site's Open Government Licence 3.0 notice. The browser snapshot uses TidyTuesday's cleaned Scotland CSV pinned to commit 22800dbb4944de7c914d96c63f5018081cd1a98a and retrieved on October 2, 2026. The 1,686,077-byte file has SHA-256 7fffaebc3023409a3a357eef5b880877ee1407c715d9c8bbbbd6dd2d7c1ea04d and contains 74,331 year-sex-name rows from 1974 through 2025.
The reproducible Python reducer verifies the source byte count, checksum, columns, row count, year range, recorded sex values, minimum published count, positive ranks, and unique year-sex-name keys. For each year and recorded sex it retains the published-name count, babies represented in published rows, leading name, every name ranked 1 through 100, and baby counts by first letter. It also keeps the full published history of the 258 boys' names and 355 girls' names that reached the top 100 at least once. Repeated generation produced the same 560,206-byte browser snapshot at SHA-256 131641fa3725714f8cd1709e6e076e66a539a7615f715c45f3c904191d7ba460. The page imports that file and makes no runtime network request.
The paired-list comparison intersects exact published spellings among names ranked 1 through 100. A tie can put more than 100 names in that group. The history view draws ranks within the top 100 and leaves a break when a name is absent or ranks lower; the exact selected-year result remains in text. First-letter shares divide represented babies with a given initial by all babies in published rows for the same year and recorded sex. The published-list view counts only names with at least three babies.
NRS states that birth registrations supply the first forename used in these statistics. Hyphenated names remain one name, space-separated names are split at the first space, different spellings are separate, and accents are combined. Since 2024, NRS has withheld names used by one or two babies to protect privacy, including those counts for earlier years in this release. The file does not include stillbirths and can omit a small number of late registrations. Rank changes also reflect annual birth totals and ties. Recorded sex categories do not describe a person's later identity. The data can show naming patterns but cannot establish why a family chose a name or attribute a change to culture, migration, media, or any other cause.
Skills used
- Data analysis
- Data engineering
- Statistical reasoning
- Systems design
- Visualization
- Information design
- Interaction design
- Visual design
- Creative coding
- Product thinking
- Editorial storytelling
- Accessibility
- Performance
What the data shows
- Only 19 boys' names and 3 girls' names appear in both the 1974 and 2025 top-100 groups. Exact spelling matters, and tied ranks can make a group larger than 100 names.
- The published girls' list grew from 593 names in 1974 to 1,024 in 2025; the boys' list grew from 345 to 958. Each listed name was used by at least three babies that year.
- S was the leading first letter for boys represented in the 1974 file at 12.5%, while A led in 2025 at 11.3%. For girls, the lead changed from L at 12.8% to A at 13.7%.
- David and Nicola led the 1974 rankings with 1,794 and 935 registered babies. Noah and Freya led in 2025 with 318 and 268, but annual birth totals differ, so counts alone do not measure how concentrated choices became.