Names of Réunion RE

INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion) records Inaya as the commonest given name in Réunion; the names that most distinguish Réunion from the rest of the world are Castor, Alonzo and Payet.

Written in French, rcf.

Population
788K
Official registers
1
Name forms recorded
920
BBuilt from 1 official register (2024), 920 name forms in our corpus, 7 cited works.

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

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

How names work in Réunion

2 naming traditions are in use in Réunion, 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 Réunion

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 1
INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion), 2024 — 418 given names counted over residents, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Inaya60—
2Jade50—
3Marie40—
4Ambre35—
5Iris35—
6Aliyah30—
7Luna30—
8Mia30—
9Emma25—
10Eva25—
11Louna25—
12Lya25—
13Alma20—
14Anna20—
15Ava20—
16Ella20—
17Inès20—
18Léna20—
19Mila20—
20Mya20—

Where the two lists disagree

25 of INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion) 2024Across all recordskaïs: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. kaïsnot rankedgabriel: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. gabrielnot rankedkayden: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. kaydennot rankedayden: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. aydennot rankedlyam: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. lyamnot rankednoah: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. noahnot rankedraphaël: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. raphaëlnot rankededen: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. edennot rankedaaron: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. aaronnot rankedleeroy: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. leeroynot rankedliam: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. liamnot rankedmaël: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. maëlnot rankednaël: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. naëlnot rankedowen: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. owennot rankedisaac: 15 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country15. isaacnot rankedléo: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. léonot rankedmayron: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. mayronnot rankedmaëlan: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. maëlannot rankednoé: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. noénot rankedarthur: 20 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country20. arthurnot rankedethan: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. ethannot rankedlucas: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. lucasnot rankedthéo: 23 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country23. théonot rankedtiago: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. tiagonot rankedadam: 25 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country25. adamnot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion), 2024 on the left; every record we hold for Réunion 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 Réunion

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Réunion 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.

SaintRunCastorAlonzoPayetSaint-PierreHoarauYon
Sized by how much of the difference between Réunion's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Over time

MarieAnneThérèseJeanneMarie-Thérèse190020244,050
INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion), 1900–2024 (125 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

Biggiven name●
Saintsurname●
Montanosurname●
Ligonsurname●
Alonzosurname●
The best-attested names in Réunion, 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

  • INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion)2024headline (given)

    Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE). Counts: residents. given. 505 forms. 1900–2024. Licence: Licence Ouverte / Open Licence (Etalab).

    What we know about this register

    French overseas department 974. Extracted from INSEE national fichier des prenoms (etat civil / civil registry of births), departmental CSV. First names by sex and year of birth WITH COUNTS (rounded to nearest 5; names with <3 births bucketed as _PRENOMS_RARES_ and excluded). Mayotte (976) data begins 2012.

    Last verified 2026-06-09.

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

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 Réunion?
Kaïs, according to INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion) (2024), with 70 bearers recorded among boys.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Réunion?
Because they count different people. INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion) (2024) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Kaïs. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is MXlle. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Is there one naming system in Réunion?
No — 2 are described on this page (Indian Ocean Creole and Comorian, French), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Réunion”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/RE (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion).