For generations at Eton, names like Fabian and Marcel, spoken with perfect King’s English, were the hallmark of high society among schoolboys.
But now, as the Daily Mail’s tongue-in-cheek ‘poshometer’ reveals, such monikers tend to be more common.
In a similar vein, once-elite girls’ names like Diana have trickled down to be embraced by families more likely to vacation in Benidorm rather than the chic locales of Provence.
Names such as Antonia and Vanessa are now widespread across Britain, although the elite still gravitate toward names like Juliette and Henrietta for girls. For boys, names such as Hugh are now in favor among professionals like doctors, lawyers, and architects.
We leverage data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to observe trends, though this dataset gives us only a glimpse of Britain, as just 10% of all birth records are classified by the ONS based on parents’ occupations.
Using these codes, individuals are assigned to one of eight different ‘classes’ across Britain.
The top category (code one) includes ‘higher professional’ occupations like large corporation executives and physicians, with category two covering ‘lower professional’ roles like journalists and office managers.
Three and four, meanwhile, are used to describe ‘intermediate’ roles, such as graphic designers and IT engineers.
Categories five and six include ‘higher working class’ jobs such as retail workers and train conductors. Category seven encompasses ‘lower working class’ positions like cleaners and garbage collectors, while category eight is designated for the long-term unemployed.
Based on these ONS figures, the Daily Mail has created an algorithm to calculate the average socio-economic rating for each name.
As well as showing which band or code each name fell into in 2024, our tool reveals how its social status has changed over the years – although if the name appears only a few times in the ONS data, the classification will be less accurate than for those which appear frequently.
According to the Daily Mail’s analysis, the poshest boys’ name is Hamish and Juliette tops the chart for girls, when excluding names that have appeared fewer than 100 times since 2001.
At the other end of the spectrum, the most working-class girls’ name is Destiny, and the least posh boys’ name is Brooklyn.
Recent ONS data showed that Muhammad was crowned the overall most popular boys’ name in England and Wales in 2024 for the second year in a row.
Mohammed, a different spelling, entered the top 100 boys’ names for England and Wales 100 years ago, debuting at 91st in 1924.
Its prevalence dropped considerably in the lead up to and during the Second World War but began to rise again in the 1960s.
This particular iteration of the name was the only one to appear in the ONS top 100 data from 1924, until Mohammad joined in the early 1980s.
Muhammad, now the most popular of the trio, first broke into the top 100 in the mid-1980s and has seen the fastest growth of all three spellings since.
The name, meaning ‘praiseworthy’ or ‘commendable’, stems from the Arabic word ‘hamad’ meaning ‘to praise’ and is shared with the founder of Islam, the prophet Muhammad.
Increasing Muslim communities across the UK, as well as the popularity of sporting figures such as Mo Farah, Mohamed Salah and Muhammad Ali, are likely to have sparked the increase.
So, where does your name appear on the scoreboard? And is it where you expected?
