Biblical boys names top name statistics for 2017

BabyBaby.Photo: Norway Today Media

Six of the ten most popular boy’s names in 2017 were taken from the Bible, but fewer children were baptised,showed numbers from Statistics Norway (SSB) .

 

‘’In 2017, the biblical boys names, Jakob and Lukas came top of the list’’, said senior adviser, Jørgen Ouren, who is responsible for the name stats at Statistics Norway.

The names of Filip, Noah, Elias and Isaac were also on the list of the ten most popular boy’s names last year.

However, the high percentage of Biblical names in recent years is not due to Norwegians becoming more religious.Church statistics showed that the proportion of baptised people had fallen considerably. In 2006, 73.9% of Norwegian children were baptised, against 55.3% in 2016.

The church also has fewer visitors and fewer members. In the early 1990s, the visits to services were close to 7.5 million annually. By 2016, this figure was down to around 5.7 million participatory visits.

In 1970, 94% of the population were members of the church. That equalled 3.6 million people. In 2016 the population had risen considerably, yet the membership rate was 3.8 million,while 350,000 were registered as members of other Christian
faith communities. In total, this corresponded to 79% of the population.

Biblical names are not as popular for girls as boys, but also on the girls top 10 list there were a few examples. Sara was in fourth place, while Maja (from Maria) was in seventh place.Lea or Leah was in 11th place, just outside the list.

 

© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today