The most popular Spanish baby names have been revealed by Spain’s national statistics office, with parents choosing more traditional names over modern monikers.
Spain’s national statistics office (INE) has released a list of the 100 most popular baby names in 2013 (the most up to date data) and the trend is still very much geared towards the traditional.
The information, released on Wednesday, showed the most popular names of the 425,390 births registered in Spain in 2013.
2 María
3 Paula
4 Daniela
5 Martina
6 Carla
7 Sara
8 Sofía
9 Valeria
10 Julia
2 Daniel
3 Pablo
4 Alejandro
5 Álvaro
6 Adrián
7 David
8 Mario
9 Diego
10 Javier
While the names are relatively traditional there seems to be a trend for names that are more international; Lucía, María and Sara, for example, are also pronounced the same in English.
The youngest daughter of Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia (left) was named Sofia after her grandmother, Queen Sofia.
Apart from María, religious names are conspicuous in their absence from the top ten – popular names for babies born in the 1950s and 1960s included María Jesús (Mary Jesus), María Concepción (Mary Conception) and Encarnación (Incarnation). Similarly the once popular male name Jesús does not appear on the list.
The statistics also revealed the most common Spanish surnames. Garcia tops the list followed by Gonzalez, Rodriguez, Fernandez, Lopez, Martinez, Sanchez, Perez, Gomez, Martin, and Jimenez .
This year’s Spanish Eurovision hopeful, Edurne Garcia, has the most common Spanish surname.
The figures also revealed the most common names in Spain across all ages.
For women, the most common name is Maria Carmen, followed by Maria, Carmen, Josefa and Isabel.
For men, Antonio is the most common name, followed by Jose, Manuel, Francisco and Juan.