First names and family names, Birthdays, Slovenia, 2008

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The fifth anniversary of the database of first names and family names
The interactive database of first names and family names of the population of the Republic of Slovenia has been available to users on our website for five years. This time it is updated with data on the population stock on 31 December 2008. This is the most frequently accessed site on the website of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia and it enables the users to find out how frequent individual first names and family names are by the different periods of births and statistical regions of Slovenia. The most frequently sought reviews are shown in prepared tables.

Among 2.032.362 people 46,205 first names
At the end of 2008 the people in Slovenia had 46,205 different first names and 90,294 different family names. The list of the names is increasing; in one year the number of new names increased by 1,364 names and in ten years by 10,510. The list of the names is increasing due to the rising share of foreign population in Slovenia (3.5%), who carry on the names from the country of origin to the next generation, acceptance of names from other cultural settings and combinations of names, which has become fashionable in recent years.

Among all names 39,330 (85%) were so rare that they appeared less than five times, while 31,329 (68%) among all names were unique.

23,012 of the names were combined from two or more names. The combined name rarely appears more than once, so only 1.8% of the population of Slovenia was called by one of the combined names. The combined names are representative for the female generations born before World War II and among people born in recent years. In the past the use of combined names was introduced to distinguish among lots of girls named Marija. In the last decade combined names have been equally represented among boys too. The most frequent female combined name was a combination of two of the most frequent names: Ana Marija. The most frequent male combined name, Žan Luka, appeared among newborns after 1990.

By the number of used letters, female names are on average longer; however, the difference was even larger in the past. Nowadays short names are fashionable; among top five girls’ and boys’ names the most frequent are the names with three to four letters. The longest name (Maksimilijana) had thirteen letters. Its male version (Maksimilijan) was the longest male name.

Most names started with the letter M (5.586 names), followed by the letter A (4.911 names). The fewest names started with letters that are not included into the Slovene alphabet and letters č, ž and š.

Marija and Franc on the decrease, Nika, Luka and Lan on the increase
In the past five years large differences have been noted as regards names of people in Slovenia.

Among female names Marija and Ana remained the most frequent, but in the past five years the number of women in Slovenia named Marija has dropped by almost 10,000 and the number of women named Ana by 2,000. This name never fell out of the top 100 list of most popular names. Maja, which was in 2003 the fifth most popular name in Slovenia, climbed to number three in 2008 (12.768 women). In the past five years the number of women named Jožefa and Frančiška has each decreased by 2,000. In addition to the mentioned names, a drop of about 1,200 has been registered for Terezija, Angela, Ivana and Antonija. On the other hand, the number of girls named Nika and Sara (1,400) and Lara and Eva (1,200) has increased the most.

As regards male names, in the past five years the number of men named Franc has dropped by almost 5,000, followed by these names: Jožef (almost 4,000), Anton (3,200), Janez (3,000) and Ivan (2,500). The other names that have registered a decrease by more than 1,000 are Stanislav, Alojz and Jože. On the other hand, the number of boys named Luka has increased by 1,800, Jan and Nejc by 1,300, Nik and Žan by 1,100 and Žiga by 1,000.

Among the first six male names the order has not changed in the past five years. The top ten list of male names was thus Franc (30,546), Janez (25,028), Anton (21,902), Ivan (21,555), Jožef (20,700) and Andrej (17,567).

New names and disappearing names
After 1990 the parents didn’t give their children some of the names that appear more than 200-times among the population of Slovenia, such as: Karol, Vilko, Radoslav, Radivoj, Rajmund, Hilda, Leopoldina, Marija Magdalena and Božica. After the independence female names Kiara, Adelisa, Nejla, Tanaja and Ronja, and male names Tian, Mai, Žan Luka, Nej and Tej appeared for the first time with the frequency of more than 30.

Consistently popular names
15 names have been among top 100 in all decades after 1920. The most frequent names, Marija and Franc, are not included in this list, which includes 9 male names (Janez, Andrej, Marko, Tomaž, Martin, Aleksander, Mihael, Matija and Jurij) and 6 female names (Ana, Barbara, Katarina, Martina, Kristina and Veronika).

A name can also be a surname
Some names can also appear as surnames and vice versa. Such names are Franc, Aleš, Klemen, Jan, Rudolf, Lenart, Vida, Rozina etc. Examples of names that appear as surnames more often than as first names are Zorko, Lazar, Avguštin, Gaber.

Among 90,294 family names, Novak, Horvat, Kranjc, Kovačič and Zupančič are the most frequent family names
The number of family names in Slovenia was double the number of first names. However, more than 75% of all 90.294 family names appeared less than five times. Half of all family names appeared only once; most of them were combined family names.

Only one family name appeared more than ten thousand times. This was the family name Novak (11,314). The second most common family name, which in 2007 also appeared more than ten thousand times, was the family name Horvat (9,998 in 2008). Those two family names were followed by the family names Krajnc, Kovačič and Zupančič with appearance more than five thousand.

Names of children born in 2008
Among children born in 2008, the most popular girls' name was Lana and boys' name was (again) Luka.

Update of the interactive database of birthdays
The database of birthdays is updated as of 31 December 2008.

Most people living in Slovenia, 7,806, were born on 1 January and the fewest (29 February is not included) on the last day of the year. The last few days of the year are days when the fewest people celebrate their birthday. For distant past there is a clear explanation for the difference among these days: it is assumed that some parents reported birth of a child who was actually born in the last days of December as if the child were born on 1 January. This was possible only for as long as most of the women gave birth at home and birth was not registered by an official institution (a maternity hospital). By reporting childbirth on 1 January, parents enabled their children to start attending school later and men started serving in the military a year later.

Between 1947 and 1964, 1 January was always among the top 10 days in terms of births.