First names and family names, birthdays, Slovenia, 1 January 2019

Name diversity

At the beginning of 2019, 56,916 different names were registered among the population of Slovenia (1,396 more than the year before).
If these names were distributed evenly among the people in Slovenia, every name would appear 37-times. In fact, it is so that the vast majority of names (70%) are unique (i.e. they appear only once). Only four names had the frequency 20,000 or more: Marija and Ana among women and Franc and Janez among men.

Small changes in the list of the most common names

This year, compared to last year, there was a change in the list of the most common male names: the name Marko moved from the fifth place to the third. The number of people named Marko increased and the number of people named Ivan (4th most common male name) and Anton (5th most common male name) decreased.

There was no change in the top five female names; the top names are Marija, Ana, Maja, Irena and Mojca.

The number of women named Marija decreased by 1,776, and the number of men named Franc by 744. After 2010, few children born in Slovenia were given the two most common names: 116 girls named Marija, which is 13 times more than boys named Franc: 9.

Among the 100 most common male names, compared to the year before, the name Gal appeared (ranked 98th) and instead of that the name Danilo disappeared. As regards female names, the name Ajda ranked 94th for the first time, and the name Pavla dropped from the top 100 female names. 

Most names made up of five letters

The residents of Slovenia have names of varying length. Among those who have a single name, most people have a name with five letters. Nearly 400,000 men and 222,000 women have a name consisting of five letters. The names are followed by six-letter names: the most women (278,000) have these names. Such a distribution is influenced by the most common names: three female names with six letters (Marija, Mateja, Nataša) and six male names with five letters (Franc, Janez, Marko, Anton, Jožef, Peter).

The naming of children is strongly influenced by fashion and decade when the child is born. In the last 18 years most girls (44%) were given a name consisting of four letters, and about half fewer (19%) were given a name consisting of five letters. Similarly, many girls below 19 years of age also have a name consisting of three letters (16%). Among the women of Slovenia born by the end of the 1980s the most had a six-letter name (one in three); among the younger generations the names with six letters are not very common (only one in seven girls has it). The older generations are characterized by longer names: the majority of Slovenian women who were born by the beginning of the 1950s have a name consisting of six letters, followed by eight letters, which are rare among the younger population.

Most men born in the last 18 years were also given four-letter names (a third), a quarter were given the name consisting of five letters and a fifth of three letters. Most men of the older generation born by the early 1950s have a name consisting of five letters (half) and six letters (a fifth). Longer names (seven letters and more) are also common among the older generations, while residents with three letters are rare.

The Names and Birthdays application upgraded

The Names and Birthdays application has a new design. Additionally, we focused on improving user experience to make the application even more user-friendly and easy-to-use. We simplified the navigation, improved the presentation of data on the page and included interactive visualisations. However, the greatest attention was focused on improving the search engine, which now suggests first names and family names during the input and enables a comparison of two first names. The application also shows content that was sought the most in the previous version, such as the most common first names, baby names, disappearing names, modern names and the most common family names.