Most Popular Baby Girl Names in China: The Latest Official List (2021) and Their Meanings

Which name do parents in China give their baby girls most often? The most recent official, nationwide answer comes from 2021: 若汐 (Ruoxi). According to China's Ministry of Public Security, about 18,000 baby girls received this name that year.

Why 2021? The ministry's national name report appeared every year from 2018 to 2021. As far as we could find, no national report has been published for 2022, 2023, 2024 or 2025. So the main list in this article is the 2021 top 10, compared with 2020. For more recent years there are only provincial and city releases, which we look at separately and label clearly.

What the report counts

The 《2021 National Name Report》, prepared by the ministry's Household Registration Administration Research Center, covers babies born in 2021 and entered in the household register with the police by the end of the year. There were 8.873 million of them, 4.192 million of them girls. The 2020 report counted 10.035 million.

The report text gives only the top 10 names for each sex, and a count only for the name in first place. That is why the table has no column for the number of babies: how many girls received the names ranked 2 to 10 is not known, and we do not estimate it.

The top 10 girls' names of 2021

A Chinese name takes its meaning from its characters. The table gives the dictionary meaning of each character separately; what the two characters suggest together is something each family may read in its own way. Readings are given in pinyin, China's official romanisation, without tone marks.

What changed from 2020 to 2021?

• New in the top 10: 若汐 (Ruoxi) went straight to 1st place, 艺涵 (Yihan) to 3rd and 苡沫 (Yimo) to 6th. None of the three was in the 2020 top 10.
• The only climber: 雨桐 (Yutong), from 9th to 7th.
• Moved down: 一诺 1 → 2, 依诺 2 → 4, 梓涵 4 → 5, 欣怡 3 → 8, 语桐 5 → 9, 语汐 8 → 10.
• Left the top 10: 欣妍 (Xinyan, 6th in 2020), 可欣 (Kexin, 7th) and 梦瑶 (Mengyao, 10th).

There is a shift at the level of characters too. 欣, "happy, joyful", appeared in three names of the 2020 top 10 (欣怡, 欣妍, 可欣); in 2021 it is left in only one (欣怡). The report, for its part, lists 汐 among the characters that rose in newborns' names in 2021 compared with 2020. In the 2021 list it appears in both the first name (若汐) and the tenth (语汐).

Same sound, different name: 一诺 and 依诺

Seeing "Yinuo" twice in the list is not a mistake. 一诺 ("one" + "to promise") and 依诺 ("to lean on, to rely on" + "to promise") sound the same but are written with different characters, and the report counts each spelling as a separate name. The same goes for 雨桐 ("rain" + "paulownia tree") and 语桐 ("speech" + "paulownia tree"): both are "Yutong".

Would the ranking change if readings were combined? We cannot know, because counts for 2nd place and below were not published. What is certain: the top 10 holds ten different spellings but only eight different readings.

In Arabic letters the difference disappears completely, because Arabic letters carry the sound, not the character. 一诺 and 依诺 are both written يي نو (76), and 雨桐 and 语桐 are both يو تونغ (1472).

The latest local signals (not national data)

With no national list after 2021, newer trends can only be followed through provincial and city releases. The lists below represent only that province or city and are not enough to draw conclusions about China as a whole.

Sichuan province, 2024

According to the Sichuan Provincial Public Security Department, among the roughly 633,300 babies born in 2024 and registered by the end of the year, the top 10 girls' names were:

1. 汐玥 (Xiyue) — 1,856 babies
2. 沐瑶 (Muyao)
3. 欣怡 (Xinyi)
4. 诗涵 (Shihan)
5. 汐瑶 (Xiyao)
6. 沐妍 (Muyan)
7. 雨桐 (Yutong)
8. 亦可 (Yike)
9. 欣悦 (Xinyue)
10. 佳怡 (Jiayi)

Here too, 汐 is in the first name, and together with 汐瑶 it appears in two names. Of the 2021 national top 10, only 欣怡 and 雨桐 also appear on this list.

Chengdu city, 2025

The Chengdu Public Security Bureau in Sichuan's capital announced that 锦汐 (Jinxi) was the most common name for baby girls in 2025. The city's full top 10 was published only as an image, so we give just the first. 锦汐 was not in Sichuan's 2024 top 10, yet it carries the same character 汐. That is no proof of a national trend; it only shows the same character coming up again and again in local data.

The Abjad window: Chinese names in Arabic letters

Chinese names have no established Arabic spelling. In this article we use a phonetic spelling in the style the Arabic press uses for Chinese names: the reading is carried into letters, not the character. The Abjad values were calculated from these spellings with the classical values of the letters. A different transcription, for example rendering a sound with another letter, gives a different value; no spelling is "more auspicious" than another.

• First letters: eight of the ten names begin with an Air letter. In seven of them the reason is the same: pinyin syllables starting with "y" are written with ي in Arabic. 梓涵 begins with ت (تسي هان). 若汐 begins with the Earth letter ر and 欣怡 with the Fire letter ش; none begins with a Water letter. This follows the classical classification used on our site; some authors classify differently.
• Highest value: 雨桐 and 语桐, 1472, because of the غ (1000) and ت (400) of the syllable "tong". Lowest: 苡沫 (Yimo), 66.
• Different reading, same value: 艺涵 (Yihan, يي هان) also adds up to 76, just like 一诺 and 依诺. A small coincidence: نو and هان give the same total (56).

A name's Abjad value on its own is not an analysis. In the Abjad tradition what matters is how the name's letters and elements relate to the mother's and father's names; a child's star chart (yıldızname) is also taken from the total of the child's name and the mother's name. The same name can complete a missing element in one family and strengthen an already dominant one in another.

Short questions, short answers

Does this list show the most popular names in China today? No, it shows 2021. It is the most recent national data we could find. For 2024 and 2025 there are only local figures such as Sichuan and Chengdu.

Why only 10 names? The report text published the top 10 for each sex. Rather than invent a longer list, we give what was published.

Is "Ruoxi" the same as 若汐? Not always. Other spellings may give the same sound; the report counts only the spelling 若汐. In a Chinese name the character carries the meaning; Latin and Arabic letters only carry the sound.

What does the Abjad value of a Chinese name show? Abjad is a tradition that works with Arabic letters. For a name that is not of Arabic origin, the value depends on the chosen spelling, so the spelling has to be fixed first. In the paid reports, the child's and the parents' names are handled in their Arabic spelling.

This article is for information only. Abjad interpretations are based on tradition and make no definitive judgement or guarantee about a name. Character meanings are dictionary definitions; the meaning a family gives a name may differ.

Source: Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China, Household Registration Administration Research Center, 《2021 National Name Report》 (24 January 2022); 2020 report (8 February 2021). Only the top 10 names are published; a count is given only for the names in first place. The figures refer to babies born in the year concerned and entered in the household register. Local data: Sichuan Provincial Public Security Department (2024), Chengdu Public Security Bureau (2025).