Olivia, Arthur and a Sevenoaks Surprise: The Names West Kent Gave Its Newborns in 2025

Every year, the Office for National Statistics quietly publishes one of its most human datasets: the first names given to every baby registered in England and Wales. Buried in the 2025 edition, released this July, is a borough-by-borough breakdown - and it throws up some proper local colour, from a four-way tie in Tonbridge & Malling to a Sevenoaks name that bucked the national trend entirely.

The numbers in brackets are how many babies were given that name in that borough in 2025 - a reminder of just how small these areas are statistically. Where two or more names are shown together, it's a genuine tie: ONS ranks babies by name popularity within each council area, and ties at the top aren't uncommon once you're down to single and low-double-digit counts.

Nationally, Olivia and Muhammad topped the charts for 2025, with Lily, Amelia, Isla and Florence rounding out the girls' top five and Noah, Leo, Luca and Arthur close behind Muhammad for the boys. Measured against that, three of our four boroughs are squarely on-trend: Olivia tops both Maidstone and Sevenoaks for girls, Florence (England's number five) tops Tunbridge Wells, and Arthur (England's number five for boys) tops both Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge & Malling. Maidstone's tied boys' winners, Noah and Oliver, are also both comfortably inside the national top six.

Sevenoaks is the outlier worth noting: George, the borough's top boys' name, doesn't feature in England's top six at all. And Tonbridge & Malling's four-way tie for girls - Elsie, Lily, Penelope and Sienna - includes only one name (Lily, nationally second) that cracks the national top six; the other three are popular choices, but distinctly more local in flavour than the rest of West Kent's results. Source: ONS, Baby names for girls in England and Wales: 2025 and Baby names for boys in England and Wales: 2025