At the beginning of 2018, 55,520 names (26,497 male and 29,023 female) were registered in Slovenia. The list of names keeps getting longer every year; in the last year it has increased by 875.

The diversity of names of the population of Slovenia is also reflected in the number of unique names - names that only one person in the country has. At the beginning of 2018 there were 38,725 (70%) unique names. On the other hand, 27 names (19 male and 8 female) had the frequency 10,000 or more. The most common names are still Franc, Janez, Ivan, Anton and Marko for men, and Marija, Ana, Maja, Irena and Mojca for women.

On average every 19th woman in Slovenia is named Marija (55,190) and every 41st Ana. The most common male name is still Franc (23,554); this is the name of every 44th man in Slovenia.

Among the top 200 most common male names, compared to the previous year, four new names appeared for the first time: Liam, Svit, Nace, Dalibor, while the names Ignac, Bruno, Adolf and Amir disappeared. Among female names, Manja and Liljana disappeared from the list of the 200 most common names, and Tara and Zarja appeared.

Compared to the previous year, the number of women named Marija decreased the most (by 1,781), followed by Ana (by 474), Jožefa (by 335) and Frančiška (by 333). Among the men the number of men named Franc decreased the most (by 776), followed by Jožef (by 570) and Anton (by 527). The number of women named Zala, Ema and Eva and men named Luka, Mark and Filip increased the most. These are the most common names for babies born in 2017.

On the list of the top 200 names, the youngest are boys whose name is Liam (4.8 years) and girls whose name is Zoja (7.4 years). On average, the oldest are men named Frančišek (74.6 years), and women named Matilda (76.4 years).

Male and female versions of names
We analysed which male names often appear as a female version if the female version is created with the suffix -a added to the male name (without any other vocal changes). This is namely the most common suffix for women's names in Slovenia. Additionally, some female names which are basically not derived from male names but which have the suffix –a and are common among the residents of Slovenia (Nik/Nika, Maj/Maja) were added to this list.

Some names rarely appear in the female form (for example, Aleša compared to the male name Aleš), the other rarely in the male form (Valerij compared to the female name Valerija). The names in which the male version is more common are for example, Nikolaj, Žan, Jernej, Ciril, Stanislav, Ivan. The female version is more common in the names Lana, Bernarda, Brina, Gaja, Maja, Klavdija and Julija. Among some names the male and female versions appear in a similar proportion (approximately half). These are for example names Martin/Martina, Simon/Simona, Matej/Mateja, Erik/Erika, Albin/Albina.

The largest difference in the mean age of the population with such names is for Vid/Vida: 46 years. While Vida is on average 63.8 years old, Vid is on average 17.4 years old. More than 20 years younger are on average men named Maj, Jan, Erik compared to women with the female versions of those names.

The oldest are men named Jožef and women named Jožefa (68.2 and 73.6 years), followed by Stanislav and Stanislava (65.4 and 68.6 years), Ivan and Ivana (63.4 and 67.4 years, respectively). On average the youngest are boys named Brin and girls named Brina (7.1 and 9.9 years), followed by Lan and Lana (8.3 and 10.2 years), and Žan and Žana (14.5 and 11.1 years).

Male and female names that are identical
Some names among the residents of Slovenia are identical for women and men. The most frequent such name is Saša, which appears twice as often among the female population compared to the male population (3,200 female names vs 1,500 male names). Many of these names have Russian roots, such as Vanja, Aljoša, Vasja, Petja, Miša.

118,491 different family names
The number of different family names is more than twice as high as the number of different first names. At the beginning of 2018 there were 118,491 different family names. More than half (58%) of all family names appear only once; most of them are a combination of two family names and are typical of married women.

On the list of top 10 family names no change was observed in one year. The most common family name and the only one with the frequency of more than 10,000 is Novak (10,999), followed by family names Horvat, Kovačič, Krajnc, Zupančič.

Updated interactive tools
What were the most popular first names and family names can be checked in the interactive Names and Birthdays database, updated today with the data on population stock on 1 January 2018. At the same time, the time series of data on first names, family names and baby names are published in the SI-STAT Database.