What are the newborn Catalans called?

Short names continue their unstoppable upwards trend for newborn Catalans –the long, religious names have been for a long time left behind.

Although the popular names for babies in the past few years continued on top in 2017, according to some data published on Thursday by the Catalan Statistics Institute (Idescat), there was a new top name for girls –while the number 1 for boys remained the same, but the gap with the second one is getting smaller.

So, what were the newborn Catalans called in 2017?

Júlia, with 634 babies, is the winner of the year for girls, dethroning Martina (601) –the number 1 for the previous 4 years–. Emma (563), Maria (532) and Lucía (531) follow in the top 5 list.  

Júlia has been among the top names for years –in fact in 2007 and 2012 it came also in the first place.

Meanwhile, Marc was the top name for boys –yet again. It is number 1 in the ranking since 1997.

But the gap is no longer the one it used to be back in the 2000s, when around 1,500 babies were used to be called Marc every year.

In 2017, 719 'Marcs' were born, with Alex cutting back the distance (580) in second place. Pol (566), Nil (529) and Jan (507) complete the top 5.

Women have on average 1.36 children

Yet last year births went down by 3.6% to 66,495 babies. That means that women on average had 1.36 children, down from 1.39 in 2016. The average in the EU for 2016 was 1.6 with Spain being in last position.

On average, Catalan women had their first child at 31 years of age –two years older that the EU average –, and only Italians were as old as Catalans when giving birth for the first time.