By decade of its highest birth count

The decade in which a name reached its largest number of births with any one registrar.

A different question from the decade a name ranked highest, and often a different answer: 2,754 names in the catalogue peak in count in one decade and in position in another. Rank depends on what every other name is doing, so a name can rank higher in a later year while being given to fewer children. Restricted to names with at least three recorded years either side of the peak, so the highest point of a record is not simply where the data begins or ends. A count of registered births, not a share and not a rate — and counts do not carry between registrars. England and Wales records roughly 600,000 births a year and Northern Ireland roughly 22,000, so the same naming habit produces figures nearly thirty times apart. A name reaching a larger count than another therefore says which registrar recorded it at least as much as it says how widely it was given. Each figure names its registrar and year for that reason. Within one registrar the counts are directly comparable; across them they are not.

8,080 records across 9 bands, ordered by largest recorded count first.

• Most births recorded in the 1940s

  Names whose largest single-year birth count from any one registrar — with at least three recorded years either side of it — falls between 1940 and 1949.

  44 names

• Most births recorded in the 1950s

  Names whose largest single-year birth count from any one registrar — with at least three recorded years either side of it — falls between 1950 and 1959.

  167 names

• Most births recorded in the 1960s

  Names whose largest single-year birth count from any one registrar — with at least three recorded years either side of it — falls between 1960 and 1969.

  205 names

• Most births recorded in the 1970s

  Names whose largest single-year birth count from any one registrar — with at least three recorded years either side of it — falls between 1970 and 1979.

  302 names

• Most births recorded in the 1980s

  Names whose largest single-year birth count from any one registrar — with at least three recorded years either side of it — falls between 1980 and 1989.

  207 names

• Most births recorded in the 1990s

  Names whose largest single-year birth count from any one registrar — with at least three recorded years either side of it — falls between 1990 and 1999.

  673 names

• Most births recorded in the 2000s

  Names whose largest single-year birth count from any one registrar — with at least three recorded years either side of it — falls between 2000 and 2009.

  1,999 names

• Most births recorded in the 2010s

  Names whose largest single-year birth count from any one registrar — with at least three recorded years either side of it — falls between 2010 and 2019.

  3,593 names

• Most births recorded in the 2020s

  Names whose largest single-year birth count from any one registrar — with at least three recorded years either side of it — falls between 2020 and 2029.

  890 names