Names of New Zealand NZ

DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) records Isla as the commonest given name in New Zealand; the names that most distinguish New Zealand from the rest of the world are James, Robert and Richard.

Written in English, Māori.

Population
4.9M
Official registers
1
Name forms recorded
30K
BBuilt from 1 official register (2025), 29,725 name forms in our corpus.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of New Zealand are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, New Zealand included.

How names work in New Zealand

2 naming traditions are in use in New Zealand, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in New Zealand

Counts children born in the year · authority tier 2

This register publishes counts, not ranks; the numbering is the order of its own figures.

DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present), 2025 — 451 given names counted over children born that year, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Isla179—
2Charlotte178—
3Amelia161—
4Hazel157—
5Olivia156—
6Lily155—
7Lucy135—
8Mila131—
9Aria125—
10Mia125—
11Sophia124—
12Sophie124—
13Ella121—
14Ruby121—
15Isabella118—
16Millie117—
17Harper115—
18Freya109—
19Sadie108—
20Ava104—

Where the two lists disagree

25 of DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) 2025Across all recordsnoah: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. noahnot rankedluca: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. lucanot rankedoliver: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. olivernot rankedgeorge: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. georgenot rankedtheodore: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. theodorenot rankedleo: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. leonot rankedcharlie: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. charlienot rankedjack: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. jacknot rankedelijah: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. elijahnot rankedtheo: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. theonot rankedarthur: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. arthurnot rankedhudson: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. hudsonnot rankedjames: 13 → 2 · ranks higher across all records13. james2henry: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. henrynot rankedcooper: 15 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country15. coopernot rankedwilliam: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. williamnot rankedlachlan: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. lachlannot rankedlucas: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. lucasnot rankedarchie: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. archienot rankedliam: 20 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country20. liamnot rankedoscar: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. oscarnot rankedhugo: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. hugonot rankedlevi: 23 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country23. levinot rankedbeau: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. beaunot rankedezra: 25 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country25. ezranot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present), 2025 on the left; every record we hold for New Zealand on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of New Zealand

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when New Zealand holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

NorthTheJamesRobertRichardStephenPeterAndrewMarkPaulSusanMatthewIanLisaJaneJasonChristopherChrisMichelleGaryMargaretGraemeHamishPhilipScottCraigTracyTonyMikeRobinBruceWayneRebeccaLouiseDonnaColinRachelSeanNeilMareeShaneRossKeithDianeNigelCherylKateGregAaronSueDouglasMattBarryTimRobBenKathleenTrevorBrettCarolyn
Sized by how much of the difference between New Zealand's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Over time

MargaretMaryElizabethSarahPatricia19002025841
DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present), 1900–2025 (126 years). The line is that register's own figure for each year — not a total across registers, which would count the same people twice. The publisher labels this series “flow”.

Up to five names at a time.

Scripts & spelling

Names in New Zealand are written in Latin (99%) and Hebrew (1%), measured over the spellings our corpus records for this country.

Hendersonsurname●
Newsurname●
Jamesgiven name●
Robertgiven name●
Stephengiven name●
The best-attested names in New Zealand, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

  • DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present)2025headline (given)

    Department of Internal Affairs (DIA). Counts: newborns. given. 491 forms. 1900–2025. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

    What we know about this register

    Birth registrations per name from 1900 onward. Names <10 registrations per year suppressed. All names by year and sex, 1900-2025.

    Last verified 2026-05-09.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-09-12.

Questions

What is the most common given name in New Zealand?
Noah, according to DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) (2025), with 244 bearers recorded among boys.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in New Zealand?
Because they count different people. DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) (2025) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Noah. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is James. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Is there one naming system in New Zealand?
No — 2 are described on this page (British, Maori), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of New Zealand”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/NZ (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present).