Most Popular Baby Girl Names in Portugal 2025 (IRN) and Their Meanings

In 2025 the most popular name for baby girls in Portugal was once again Maria: 4,791 babies in registrations up to 30 November 2025. Alice, in second place, has 1,195, so in the IRN figures Maria is roughly four times the second name. The real movement, though, is further down: Olívia entered the top 10 at No. 7 and Aurora rose to No. 6.

This article gives the provisional 2025 top 10 girls' names from Portugal's Registry and Notary Institute (IRN) with their meanings, origins, Arabic spellings and Abjad values. We then compare the ranks with 2024 and with the 2021–2023 lists, and finish with the names that are rising heading into 2026.

Before you read: four quick checks

Portuguese name data is not published as a full table the way England's ONS statistics are. Keep these four points in mind to read the figures correctly:

1. The list is provisional. The 2025 figures cover registrations from 1 January to 30 November 2025; this is not the final year-end list.
2. Only a top 10 exists. IRN has not published a full list for years; each year it gives the press a top 10. The numbers here are IRN / Ministry of Justice figures as reported in the press; there is no 2025 list that can be checked on IRN's own website.
3. Counts are not comparable across years. The 2021–2023 lists are top 20s covering the full year or close to it. The 2024 list is also provisional and covers part of the year; outlets give its cut-off as September, October or November. That is why we compare ranks, not baby counts.
4. Each spelling counts separately. Names registered with a different spelling appear on separate lines.

The 10 most popular girls' names in Portugal in 2025 (provisional)

* Births registered at Portugal's civil registry between 1 January and 30 November 2025, including children of foreign parents. Year-end figures may differ.

What the ranks tell us: 2021 to 2025

The table below shows the 2025 top 10 plus the two names that were in the 2024 top 10 but dropped out in 2025, with their ranks over five years. A "—" means the name was not in that year's published list: not in the top 20 in 2021–2023, not in the top 10 in 2024. The name may still have been given.

Compared with 2024 (two partial years, different cut-offs)

• Climbers: Leonor 5 → 3, Aurora 7 → 6.
• New in the top 10: Olívia (7) and Francisca (10). Neither was in the provisional 2024 top 10.
• Slipping: Benedita 3 → 5, Carolina 6 → 8, Camila 8 → 9.
• Left the top 10: Margarida (9th in 2024) and Beatriz (10th in 2024).

The longer view

Maria is No. 1 in every year of the 2021–2025 data we have. Alice was 4th in 2021 and has been 2nd every year since 2022. Matilde has held 4th place for four years. Beatriz, 7th every year from 2021 to 2023, fell to 10th in 2024 and is not in the 2025 top 10. A small note: in the 2023 list only one baby separates Matilde and Benedita, and one press text gives the two names in reverse order; the table shows Matilde, with the higher count, in 4th place.

Maria and Maryam: a familiar link

There is no name of Arabic origin in the top 10. Yet the No. 1 shares its root with a name that has a special place in the Qur'an: Maria is the Latin form of Hebrew Miryam, and its Arabic equivalent is Maryam. Maryam (Mary) is the only woman mentioned by name in the Qur'an, and a sura is named after her. In Arabic the European name Maria is usually written ماريا, which gives an Abjad value of 252. Its traditional equivalent, مريم, comes to 290.

An Abjad view: the letters of ten names

Abjad works with Arabic letters, so the value of a name written in Latin letters is calculated from its established Arabic spelling. The values in the table come from these spellings, using the classical Abjad value of each letter. For Benedita and Francisca we found no established spelling in the Arabic press, so we used a phonetic spelling.

• Element of the first letter: six of the ten names begin with a Fire letter (Maria and Matilde with م; Alice, Aurora and Olívia with أ; Francisca with ف). Carolina and Camila begin with ك, a Water letter; Leonor with ل, Earth; Benedita with ب, Air. This is the classical classification used on our site; some authors order the elements differently.
• Highest values: Matilde 495, Benedita 487, Francisca 482. Matilde and Benedita both contain ت (400); in Francisca the value is lifted by ر (200) and two س (60). Lowest: Alice 101 and Camila 102.
• Shared values: this year no two names in the top 10 share the same value.

Change the spelling and the value changes: Maria gives 252 as ماريا, 256 as مارية and 290 as مريم. That does not make any spelling "more auspicious", but it explains why our paid reports always begin by fixing the exact spelling of the child's and the parents' names.

Girls' names to watch on the way to 2026

There is no 2026 data yet, and we make no forecast here. What we do is simple: look at how ranks moved in the lists published between 2021 and 2025.

• Aurora: not in the 2021 top 20; then 20 → 12 → 7 → 6. Among the names in the 2025 top 10, the only one that has climbed every year since 2022.
• Olívia: 20th in 2023, not in the 2024 top 10, 7th in 2025.
• Camila: 16th in 2021; according to IRN's 2022 announcement it entered the top 10 for the first time that year, and it has stayed between 8th and 10th since.
• Back in: Francisca was in the top 10 in 2021–2023, absent from the 2024 list and 10th in 2025.
• Steady leaders: Maria, Alice, Leonor, Matilde, Benedita and Carolina are in the top 10 in all five years.

These movements show a direction, not the 2026 ranking. The real picture will only be visible with IRN's next figures.

A final word

A name being in Portugal's top 10 does not make it right for your family. The sensible path is to check the meaning in the table, choose the spelling with care, and weigh family compatibility together with the mother's and father's names.

This article is for information only. Abjad interpretations are based on tradition and contain no definitive judgement or guarantee about any name.

Source: Portugal's Registry and Notary Institute (IRN – Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado) / Ministry of Justice figures, as reported in the press; for 2025 the provisional top 10 for 1 January – 30 November 2025, for 2024 the provisional part-year top 10, for 2021–2023 the near-full-year top 20 lists. The numbers refer to births registered in Portugal.