Your feedback can help us improve and enhance our services to the public. Tell us what matters to you in our online Customer Satisfaction Survey.
This release is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. For further information on the data sources, linking procedures and limitations of this report, see the Background Notes section.
There were 508 babies who shared the same name as either their mother or father in 2024.
Baby boys were more likely to be named after their father with 464 such instances compared with 44 girls who shared the same name as their mother in 2024.
Michael was the most popular name for a baby boy to share with their father.
Mary was the most popular name for a baby girl to share with their mother.
The average age of a mother in 2024 was 33.3, while mothers who shared the same name as their baby girls were on average younger, at 30.5.
| X-axis label | Average age of parents, 2024 |
|---|---|
| Average age of mothers, all births | 33.3 |
| Average age of mothers, same name | 30.5 |
| Average age of fathers, all births | 35.5 |
| Average age of fathers, same name | 32.7 |
Learn about our data and confidentiality safeguards, and the steps we take to produce statistics that can be trusted by all.
Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (03 April 2025), for the first time, published statistics on Irish babies who share the same name as their parents.
Commenting on the trends in Irish baby names, Seán O’Connor, Statistician in the Life Events and Demography Division of the CSO, said: "Today, the CSO has, for the first time, analysed the information we gather on Irish baby names as part of our Irish Babies’ Names 2024 release, to see how many baby boys and girls are given the same name as their mother or father.
Looking at the data, we can see that of the 54,060 individual baby names registered in 2024, a total of 508 babies shared the exact same name as either their mother or father. This means that less than one in every 100 babies born in Ireland share the exact same name as either their mother or father (0.94%). Of these 508 babies, 464 were male and 44 were female.
On average, mothers and fathers who share the same name as their baby boy or girl tend to be younger, with the average age being 30.5 years for a mother and 32.7 years for a father. This compares with the average age of 33.3 for all mothers and 35.5 for all fathers.
Men called Michael, Patrick, or James were the most likely to name their sons after themselves. Looking at the overall popularity of these names, Michael was ranked 17th, Patrick ranked 16th, and James was 5th in the overall rankings in 2024. James, and Jack, have been in the top five list for boys’ names since 1998.
In comparison, Mary was the most popular name for mothers to pass on to their daughters, with four girls sharing this name with their mother in 2024. However, overall, Mary placed outside the top 100 most popular names in 2024, which is only the third time in 50 years that the name Mary did not feature in the top 100. We are unable to share any details on the remaining 40 girls’ names who shared the same name as their mother in 2024 as due to confidentiality reasons, a name must be recorded three or more times in any year to be included in our rankings list.
Nearly four out of every ten babies named Stephen in 2024 shared the same name as their father, while less than one out of every 100 babies named Jack were named after their father. Just under one in ten baby girls called Mary had the same name as their mother.
While nationally in 2024, only 0.94% of babies were named after either their mother or father, Limerick City (2.4%) was the region which saw the highest share of babies named after their parents".