Little Louise and Lucas: Flanders' most popular baby names

Summary

Flanders is full of Louises, while Brussels is overrun by Adams. Or are they?

By any other name

The most popular name in Flanders last year was Louise for girls and Lucas for boys – both old favourites. Brussels was more of a surprise, however: Nour was the top-ranked name for girls, and Adam for boys.

But do these annual rankings actually mean very much? Are there lots of little Adams toddling around, pulling the pigtails of the little Nours?

Not really. There are so many more names in circulation these days that it takes far fewer hits to score highly in the popularity stakes. In the last 20 years, the number of different names registered for girls has gone up by 62%, and for boys by 66%.

Over the same period, the number of times a name showed up – for either gender – has fallen by 33%. Although Emma was the most popular girl’s name across the whole country in 2015, it was only used 645 times. For the boys, Louis won with 613.

In Flanders, Lucas led with 342, only four points ahead of Liam with 338. Louise leads the girls with 372, ahead of Emma on 364. Bear in mind that those Emmas, despite coming second, make up more than half of the winning national total.

In Brussels, the leader Adam was named in only 213 cases, and Nour in only 101.

Photo: Ingimage

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