Since 1996 Ane has been the top ranking first name that parents choose for girls, according to information collected by Eustat on births occurring in the period between 2004 and 2006 in the A.C. of the Basque Country. The second and third place went to Irati and Naroa, followed by June, Uxue, Leire and Nahia.

Iker continued to be the preferred boy's name, followed by Jon and Unai. The next most popular names used were Ander, Mikel and Oier.

The Civil Register allows a maximum of two single and one combined name: even so, most parents chose just one single name.

On the list of the hundred most popular names there is only one combined name for boys – Jon Ander; in the case of girls, combined names with Maria, once quite common, do not appear on the list.

Basque names predominate, some registered with different spellings; this is the case for Ane-Anne, Itxaso-Itsaso, Leire-Leyre, Jon-Ion and Aritz-Haritz. All of these cases (where there are two ways to spell the name) appear on the list of the 100 most popular names with the exception of Itsaso y Ion.

Except for in the case of María and Miren, the Basque form of a name is more common than the Spanish; this holds true for Ane and Ana, Xabier and Javier, Jon and Juan as well as Miken and Miguel.

In particular, birth statistics for 2006 show 1,511 different girl names and 1,358 for boys. Out of those, 1,015 girl names and 955 boy names appear only once and among them are Chinese, African, Arabic, Italian, and Anglo-Saxon, etc names. These results show that since 1999 the number of names used has increased 58.6% for boys and 44.3% for girls.

Table 1: List of the 25 most popular names used in the three last years

Source: EUSTAT. Birth statistics