RACING CHART REVEALS MOST POPULAR NAMES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS OVER TIME

Think Matthew, Katie and William are still three of the most popular names given to babies? Well, you'd be wrong.

Mesmerising charts today show how some traditional names have slowly fallen out of favour over time.

MailOnline crunched Office for National Statistics data covering between 1996 and 2022, to illustrate how the 10 most popular names for boys and girls have changed over time.

Our chart, which you can manually pause, adds up every mention of each name over the years to show off the results cumulatively. It illustrates that there have been more than 185,000 boys born called Jack since 1996, for example.

It doesn't, therefore, show the top 10 for individual years.

For example, Noah was the most popular boy's name in 2022, for the second year in a row, but it has been registered just shy of 65,000 times since records began.

It means Noah does not feature on our list for 2022, despite being the most popular name then.

Oliver first entered MailOnline's chart for the top 10 most popular names for boys in 2007, cracking the top five six years later.

The combination of Jack, Thomas and Joshua reigned supreme in the top three most from 2005-2018 until Oliver overtook Joshua.

Daniel has fallen from the second-most popular name in 1996 down to seventh, while Matthew disappeared from the top 10 by 2008.completely by 2008.

On the girl's side, the most popular name of 2022, Olivia, has barnstormed its way to the top of the tables since cracking the top 10 in 2001.

Emily is the only name to have been logged more since 1996.

During the 27-year period tracked by MailOnline, Chloe has never been lower than third in the rankings.

Megan climbed to the top three between 1996 and 2000 but now sits ninth.

Olivia also dominated across the varying age groups of mothers, taking the most popular name in three out of four age demographics (25-29, 30-34 and over-35).

Noah, meanwhile, came top in just one demographic, under-25, with Muhammad scoring higher in both 25-29 and over-35, while 30-34 year-olds preferred the name Oliver.

2024-07-27T08:14:23Z dg43tfdfdgfd