Romania · 2002–2022 · girls and boys
Would you still give this name?
Maria ranked No. 1 in every year from 2002 to 2022 while its top neighbours vanished one by one. Type a first name and a birth year to see whether you belong to a crowd or a memory.
The data comes from Romania's National Persons Registry, via the Persons Records Directorate: the top 20 first names for each birth year, girls and boys separately. The latest complete year is 2022. There are no county series because the authority publishes none.
Rising
Maria · 2002 → 2022
In 2002, 17,000 girls received the name Maria (No. 1 nationally). In 2022: 22,100 girls (No. 1), i.e. +30.0% versus 2002.
Children given the name, year by year
Rank in the top, year by year
| Year | Registered children | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 17,000 | 1 |
| 2003 | 17,917 | 1 |
| 2004 | 18,497 | 1 |
| 2005 | 20,604 | 1 |
| 2006 | 21,677 | 1 |
| 2007 | 21,719 | 1 |
| 2008 | 23,038 | 1 |
| 2009 | 25,245 | 1 |
| 2010 | 25,254 | 1 |
| 2011 | 24,980 | 1 |
| 2012 | 26,661 | 1 |
| 2013 | 27,186 | 1 |
| 2014 | 27,639 | 1 |
| 2015 | 29,041 | 1 |
| 2016 | 29,952 | 1 |
| 2017 | 29,128 | 1 |
| 2018 | 28,655 | 1 |
| 2019 | 28,045 | 1 |
| 2020 | 26,096 | 1 |
| 2021 | 24,992 | 1 |
| 2022 | 22,100 | 1 |
And in Iași, in 2023: Maria ranked No. 1 among girls, with 827 out of 3,337 (about 1 in 4).
The crowd today
1,486,913 women were named Maria in August 2024, and with derivatives (Mariana, Mărioara) almost 2 million women celebrated the name day (DGEP, via News.ro).
The yearly top
The whole crowd of a single year, in one place. Choose the sex and the year, then choose a name to see it in the register, next to the answer and the charts. The ranking comes from the year's top 20 names, computed in the browser from the national series.
Sex
Top 10 in 2002, girls
| Rank | Name | Registered children |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maria | 17,000 |
| 2 | Andreea | 10,721 |
| 3 | Alexandra | 8,412 |
| 4 | Elena | 7,917 |
| 5 | Ioana | 5,156 |
| 6 | Ana | 4,997 |
| 7 | Georgiana | 4,477 |
| 8 | Mihaela | 4,413 |
| 9 | Cristina | 4,394 |
| 10 | Gabriela | 4,122 |
How the top moved
Each line follows one name from 2002 to 2022. No. 1, at the top, is the most given name of the year. A broken line marks a year below No. 20. The emphasised name is the chosen one.
- Maria · 1 → 1
- Andreea · 2 → 7
- Alexandra · 3 → 11
- Elena · 4 → 3
- Ioana · 5 → 2
- Ana · 6 → 12
- Georgiana · 7 → below No. 20
- Mihaela · 8 → below No. 20
- Cristina · 9 → below No. 20
- Gabriela · 10 → 10
| Name | 2002 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Maria | 1 · 17,000 | 1 · 22,100 |
| Andreea | 2 · 10,721 | 7 · 3,631 |
| Alexandra | 3 · 8,412 | 11 · 2,142 |
| Elena | 4 · 7,917 | 3 · 5,145 |
| Ioana | 5 · 5,156 | 2 · 6,187 |
| Ana | 6 · 4,997 | 12 · 1,832 |
| Georgiana | 7 · 4,477 | below No. 20 |
| Mihaela | 8 · 4,413 | below No. 20 |
| Cristina | 9 · 4,394 | below No. 20 |
| Gabriela | 10 · 4,122 | 10 · 2,320 |
Names that left the top
The 23 names from the 2002 top that no longer appear in the 2022 top. The rule is mechanical: present in the 2002 top 20, absent in 2022, with at least 2,000 children in 2002. For these we only know they fell below the 2022 No. 20 threshold (1,250 girls, 1,563 boys), so each fall is a lower bound, marked “at least”. Choose a name to see it in the register.
Three fates from the register
Ion left before the series began
Ion never appears in the top 20 in any year from 2002 to 2022. Its collapse happened before our window. The register of the living shows the remaining crowd: in January 2024, 328,081 men were named Ion, 442,011 Ioan and 364,186 Ionuț. Ioan, the church form, held on in the top (No. 18 in 2002, No. 9 in 2022). In August 2024, another 316,800 men were named Marian. Maria, by contrast, never left No. 1.
Andrei took the lead in 2005 and never gave it back
In 2002, Alexandru led the boys with 11,799 and Andrei was second with 11,003. Since 2005 Andrei has led without interruption, peaking at 16,654 in 2017 and reaching 12,150 in 2022. Alexandru slipped to No. 4 with 5,846 in 2022, i.e. −50.5% versus 2002.
David, the steepest rise and fall
David entered the top in 2004 at No. 16. Eight years later it reached No. 2, and in 2015 it touched 12,004, its series peak. In 2022 it fell back to No. 6 with 5,204, i.e. −56.6% from the peak. It is the sharpest arc in the register.
Late arrivals in the top
An editorial category with a mechanical definition: names whose first top-20 appearance falls in 2011 or later, that is, in the second half of the series. Some are recent international forms, others are old Romanian names returning (Matei, Tudor, Vlad, Ilinca). The label records the date of entry into the top, not origin, and says nothing about the bearers' ethnicity.
- Alessia · since 2011
- Antonia · since 2011
- Matei · since 2011
- Nicolas · since 2012
- Anastasia · since 2014
- Maya · since 2014
- Rareș · since 2014
- Rebeca · since 2014
- Eva · since 2016
- Natalia · since 2016
- Anais · since 2017
- Ilinca · since 2018
- Tudor · since 2018
- Vlad · since 2019
- Ariana · since 2020
- Dominic · since 2020
- Vladimir · since 2020
- Eric · since 2022
One city, one year: Iași 2023
The only complete sub-national count found comes from the Iași Local Persons Records Directorate: all 7,036 births registered in the municipality in 2023 (3,699 boys, 3,337 girls), with a top 10 by sex. In Iași, Maria leads by far with 827, about 1 in 4 girls. Among boys, Andrei leads with 500, about 1 in 7. Compound names are counted separately: Eva-Maria leads the girls with 58, Rareș-Andrei the boys with 33.
The comparison with the national series carries one reservation: 2023 is a complete year in Iași, while the latest complete national year is 2022. The page shows both figures side by side precisely so the reservation stays visible.
How we know
- Source
- The General Directorate for Persons Records, a table sent to the publication Știrile ProTV and published on 29 March 2023, extracted from the National Persons Registry. Ranks and levels were checked against independently republished 2009 MAI figures: the top matches, levels differ by about 15%, a sign of the birth-year extract's wider scope.
- What it measures
- The number of persons in the registry born in a given year and carrying a given first name: the top 20 names of each annual cohort, girls and boys separately.
- Unit
- Person count and top rank. No shares of all births are published, because the extract's scope (RNEP registrations, including late transcriptions) does not match the scope of resident births reported by INS, and the ratio would systematically overstate.
- Period
- Birth years 2002–2022 complete. The table's 2023 column covers only registrations processed by 29 March 2023 and is excluded from the curves.
- Normalisation
- The source spells without diacritics (Stefan, Ionut). The page shows standard forms (Ștefan, Ionuț). Search ignores diacritics and case.
- Compound names
- The national table keeps the exact registered form. In Iași, compounds are reported separately (Eva-Maria, Rareș-Andrei) and are not added to the simple forms.
- Missing cells
- A missing year for a name means “below No. 20”, not zero. The 2022 No. 20 threshold is 1,250 for girls and 1,563 for boys.
- One generation
- Twenty years: 2002–2022, the complete ends of the series.
- Counties
- DGEP, INS and data.gov.ro publish no county-by-year first-name series. Geography therefore offers Romania and the municipality of Iași (2023); the remaining counties appear marked as unpublished data.
- Limits
- Only each year's peak (top 20) is visible. Nobody's ethnicity or identity is inferred from a first name. The “late arrivals” category records the date of entry into the top, not origin.
Sources
- DGEP table 2002–2023 via Știrile ProTV, 29 March 2023 and the table file (PDF), accessed 8 September 2026.
- Iași 2023 register: DLEP Iași, 2023 birth statistics (PDF), accessed 8 September 2026.
- Living totals: Digi24 via Agerpres, 7 January 2024 (Ioan family) and Adevărul via News.ro, 15 August 2024 (Maria family).
- 2009 check: Behind the Name, 2009 MAI figures, accessed 8 September 2026.
- The full derivation record is in the project's SOURCES.md.