Names of people born in the UK between 1999 and 2002

You asked

Q1

Please disclose the following information in relation to the legal names at birth of people born in the United Kingdom between 1999 and 2002:

1. How many people's given names began with each letter of the alphabet? (e.g. A - 200000, B - 180000, etc.)
2. How many people's surnames began with each letter of the alphabet?

If you are unable to provide information on this specific time period, please instead provide the information on the UK population as a whole.

Q2

Please disclose the number of people which were born in each month between January 1999 and December 2002.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Given names and surnames

We have not undertaken analysis on the information you have requested, therefore we consider this information not held.

However, table 6 of our Baby Names in England and Wales publication will show you all names registered on an annual basis from 1996 to 2019 with a count exceeding 3. ONS have not provided numbers of names with a count of 3 or less in total within England and Wales. These figures have been redacted in order to protect the confidentiality of individuals. This is consistent with the disclosure control methodology used for births. Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) which renders it an offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individual businesses or persons can be identified, we find that Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. Section 44 is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied

Monthly births from January 1999 to December 2002.

Unfortunately, we would be unable to provide you with Monthly births for January 1999 to December 2002. In order to fulfil this request, we would need to create a bespoke analysis or table. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information to respond to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held.

We may be able to create a custom output. Information on monthly births, along with other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate).

Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.