Canadian Baby Names with Meanings

Canada's naming charts read a lot like the rest of the English-speaking world at the top — Olivia, Liam, Emma and Noah have all held the number-one spot nationally in recent years — but the country's bilingual reality shows up fast just below that. Quebec's French-speaking majority keeps distinctly French names in heavy year-round use nationally in a way that doesn't happen south of the border: Adrien, Alice, Antoine, Amandine and Anaïs all sit in our catalogue as French entries used across Canada, not just in France.

What makes Canadian naming genuinely its own, though, is what sits beneath the English and French layer: Inuit names from the Arctic north — Nanook (polar bear), Sila (the spirit of weather and sky), Siku (sea ice), Aput (snow) — and First Nations and Métis names in everyday use across the country, from Cheyenne and Cherokee to Aiyana (eternal blossom) and Chayton (falcon). A steady wave of immigration from South Asia, East Asia and the Philippines over the last few decades has also made Toronto and Vancouver two of the most name-diverse cities anywhere, so plenty of names on the country pages here for India, Japan and the Philippines are just as Canadian in practice.

The list below combines the English, French, Inuit and Native American names in our catalogue as used in Canada, most common first. Use the finder's origin filter to isolate the French-Canadian or Inuit names on their own.