Most Popular Baby Girl Names in Spain 2023 (INE) and Their Meanings

The name most often given to baby girls born in Spain in 2023 was Lucía: 3,076 babies. In the 2021–2023 data we have, it is number one in all three years. But the real story of 2023 is in second place: Sofía, with 2,990 babies, finished just 86 babies behind Lucía. In 2022 the gap was 640.

The figures come from the "Nombres de los recién nacidos" list that Spain's National Statistics Institute, INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística), publishes as part of its birth statistics. They cover the whole of Spain and are final (definitivo) data. According to the same file, 156,039 girls were born in Spain in 2023, compared with 159,649 in 2022: 3,610 fewer, or about 2.3%. So we read the 2023 list with one question in mind: in a year with fewer births, which names were still given to more babies?

The 30 most popular girl names of 2023

The Arabic spelling in the table is the established or phonetic way of writing the name in Arabic script, and the Abjad value is calculated from that spelling. Until the Arabic spelling of a Latin-script name is fixed, it has no single "correct" Abjad value. INE merges accent differences but counts different spellings separately: Leire is 52nd with 542 babies, while Leyre has its own line at 88th with 302. Names with the same count share a rank, which is why Alma and Carmen (1,615 babies each) are both 12th.

Together, the top 30 names were given to 48,086 girls, 30.8% of all girls born in 2023. In 2022 the top 30 accounted for 31.8% and the top 100 for 53.9%; in 2023 the top 100 accounted for 52.4%. In short, the most common names take up slightly less of the total.

Fewer births, six names on the rise

24 of the top 30 names were given to fewer babies than in 2022. Only 6 names increased their count:

Of the six, Gala saw the biggest increase: 297 more girls were given the name than in 2022, and it moved from 26th to 20th. Vega climbed from 15th to 10th and entered the top 10; the name it displaced was Daniela, which slipped from 10th to 14th. Increases of just 2 babies for Carmen and 1 for Manuela may look tiny, but with the names around them falling, that was enough to lift Carmen from 14th to 12th and Manuela from 32nd to 28th.

The fallers and a reshuffled top 30

Within the top 30, the largest drop in numbers was for Valeria: 533 fewer babies were given the name, and it fell from 4th to 6th. The second-largest drop was Lucía's (463 babies). The shrinking of the gap at the top from 640 to 86 is simply these two figures combined: a fall for Lucía and an increase of 91 for Sofía. Carla slipped from 11th to 15th, Lola from 16th to 19th and Alba from 19th to 22nd.

Manuela, Triana and Laia entered the top 30 in 2023. Ana (33rd), Abril (32nd) and Vera (37th), all in the 2022 top 30, left the top 30 but remain in the top 100. Further down, three names appear in the top 100 for the first time in our 2021–2023 data: Antonella (92nd), Aya (99th) and Roma (100th).

Names with an echo in Islamic tradition

• María (4th): its traditional Arabic equivalent is Maryam (مريم, 290). Maryam is the only woman mentioned by name in the Qur'an.
• Sara (17th): the name of Sarah, wife of the Prophet Abraham (سارة, 266). The Qur'an tells her story but does not give her name.
• Daniela (14th): the feminine form of Daniel, the prophet known in Islamic tradition as Danyal (دانيال, 96), who is not named in the Qur'an.
• Lower in the top 100 there are also names of Arabic origin: Nour (75th, نور, 256, "light"), Yasmín (89th, ياسمين, 171, jasmine), Fátima (94th, فاطمة, 135, the name of Fatimah, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad), Layan (97th, ليان, 91, "soft, gentle") and Aya (99th, آية, 16, "verse, sign"). Nour, Yasmín and Fátima were each given to a few more babies in 2023 than in 2022.

The Abjad of the 2023 list in five questions

How were the values calculated? Abjad works on Arabic letters. We counted the Arabic spelling in the table using our site's rule: letters are counted as written, the article "al-" and the shadda are not counted separately, and an alif with hamza is 1.

Why does Vega have the highest value? Vega (فيغا) comes to 1091, and 1000 of that comes from the letter ghayn (غ) alone. Take that letter away and the remaining ف, ي and ا add up to just 91: a single letter, chosen for the Spanish g sound, is what lifts Vega into four figures.

What happens if the spelling changes? In the table Daniela is written with two yā' (دانييلا) and comes to 106; with one (دانيلا) it comes to 96. A small coincidence: that second value is the same as Danyal (دانيال), the form Daniel takes in Islamic tradition. No spelling is "luckier" than another; what matters is settling the spelling the family actually uses.

Which letter element leads the top 10? In the classical classification, 6 of the top 10 names begin with a Fire letter (Martina, María, Valeria, Olivia, Emma, Vega), 2 with Air (Sofía ص, Paula ب), 1 with Earth (Lucía ل) and 1 with Water (Julia ج). Part of the reason for the Fire majority is the alphabet itself: names beginning with a vowel are written with alif in Arabic. Note that some authors use a different classification of the letter elements.

Do any names share a value? Yes, even from opposite ends of the list. María written as مارية comes to 256, and so does Nour (نور), which sits in the top 100. Their meanings and origins are entirely different; the same number does not mean the same character.

That last point also shows why the table is only a starting point. A name's Abjad value is not an analysis on its own. The real question is how a candidate name fits with the mother's and father's names: which element dominates the family's element map, and which one is missing? A child's Yildizname star chart is also calculated together with the mother's name. These things only become visible when the family's names are looked at together.

Final word

The 2023 list shows the race at the top tightening in a year of falling births: Lucía kept first place, but only 86 babies separated her from Sofía, while Gala and Vega rose even within a shrinking total. Popularity tells you how often a name is chosen; whether it suits your family depends on its meaning and on how it relates to the parents' names. INE has also published its 2024 data, which we cover in a separate article.

Source: Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE), Birth Statistics — names of newborns (Nombres de los recién nacidos), 2023 final data. The figures show the distribution of babies born in Spain that year by first name.

Note: This article is for information only. Abjad and letter elements are a traditional framework of interpretation; no claim is made that a name determines anything specific about a person's life.