Australian Baby Names with Meanings

Australian naming shares the same English backbone as Britain, Canada and the US at the very top of the charts — Charlotte, Olivia, Oliver and Noah all rank highly — but Australians have a well-documented habit of shortening whatever they land on: William becomes Will or Bill within a year of the birth certificate being signed, and a striking number of Australian parents now register the short form itself as the legal name, which is why Jack, Max, Ivy and Ruby all read as complete, standalone names here rather than nicknames.

What sets this list apart from the other English-speaking country pages is its Aboriginal Australian layer, names drawn from the languages of Australia's First Nations peoples and almost always tied to the land or the sky rather than to a person: Jarrah (a eucalyptus tree, also a region of Western Australia), Kirra (leaf), Alinta (the flame), Bindi (a small flowering plant), Kalinda (the sun) and Kai (sea, shared with Māori and Hawaiian naming) have all crossed into mainstream use well beyond Aboriginal families themselves. Waves of migration from Italy, Greece, Vietnam, Lebanon and China through the twentieth century added a further layer that shows up more in surnames than first names, but is increasingly visible in the given names of second- and third-generation Australian children too.

The list below combines the English and Aboriginal Australian names in our catalogue as used in Australia, most common first. Pair it with the letter pages if you're after something short.