DST newborn baby names (1985-2025)
Top 50 annual rankings of most popular baby girl and boy names in Denmark from 1985 to 2025.
Dataset Documentation
Authoritative source specification, architecture and standards
This dataset contains the official records published by Statistics Denmark (Danmarks Statistik) on the most popular given names for newborn girls and boys in Denmark from 1985 to 2025.
Spanning over 1.44 million baby namings across 41 annual cohorts, this repository provides a comprehensive historical view of 40 years of naming trends in Danish society — ranging from 1980s and 1990s staples such as Camilla, Christian, and Mads to modern favourites like Alma, Agnes, William, and Carl.
📂 Files in this Dataset
| File | Format | Rows | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
nyfoedte_top50_1985_2025 |
CSV |
3,700 | ~90 KB | Full structured table containing year, gender, rank, given name, and newborn count. |
📊 Dataset Key Figures & Facts
- Time Span: 1985 – 2025 (41 consecutive annual cohorts).
- Total Rows: 3,700 observations (1,850 for girls, 1,850 for boys).
- Total Newborns Covered: 1,449,891 births recorded on the lists.
- Unique Given Names: 251 distinct names (125 girl names and 126 boy names have appeared on the charts).
- List Coverage:
- 1985 – 1992: Top 25 names per gender (50 rows per year).
- 1993 – 2025: Top 50 names per gender (100 rows per year).
📋 Data Schema and Field Definitions
The CSV file is encoded in UTF-8 using commas (,) as delimiters:
| Column | Type | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
År |
Integer | 2024 |
Statistical survey year (1985–2025). |
Køn |
String | Pige |
Gender category (Pige for Girl, Dreng for Boy). |
Placering |
Integer | 1 |
Ranking position on the list for that specific year and gender (1–50). |
Navn |
String | Alma |
The officially registered first name. |
Antal |
Integer | 542 |
Total count of newborn babies registered with that name during the year. |
Sample Rows (CSV)
År,Køn,Placering,Navn,Antal
2025,Pige,1,Alma,499
2025,Pige,2,Sofia,476
2025,Pige,3,Agnes,450
2025,Dreng,1,Carl,553
2025,Dreng,2,William,521
💡 Use Cases
This dataset is ready for immediate use across numerous applications:
1. Time-Series Analysis & Trends: Modeling the lifecycle, rise, and decline of given names over decades.
2. Cultural & Demographic Studies: Analyzing generational shifts in baby-naming conventions.
3. Baby Name Engines & Apps: Recommendation engines and popularity lookup tools for prospective parents.
4. Data Science & Pedagogy: Ideal structured dataset for practicing data wrangling, grouping, and visualization with pandas, R, SQL, PowerBI, or Tableau.
🔄 Reproduction & Updating
Data is fetched directly from Statistics Denmark's underlying endpoints for their baby names portal. You can reproduce or update this dataset using the provided Python script:
pip install requests beautifulsoup4
python fetch_data.py
The script systematically queries each year, parses the girl and boy HTML tables, and compiles the result into nyfoedte_top50_1985_2025.csv.
📜 License, Attribution & Terms
- Source: Statistics Denmark (DST) — Topic: Names for newborns.
- License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
- Terms of Reuse:
As specified by Statistics Denmark in their open data terms:"All statistical data on Statistikbanken.dk and the dst.dk website may be used freely for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, provided the source is credited. This corresponds to the license known as Creative Commons, CC 4.0 BY."
When redistributing, republishing, or incorporating this data into applications, please credit Statistics Denmark as the source (e.g. "Source: Statistics Denmark (dst.dk)" or with a link to dst.dk).
Available File Groups & Downloads
Grouped by usage pattern with unique list titles and dedicated download pills per data format.
Automation & Fetch
Directly download data files via curl or standard REST endpoints