The most used girls' names beginning with P in 2025

P is the mirror image of J. For girls it is a strong letter with three names inside the top 40: Poppy at seventh, Phoebe at 14th and Penelope at 33rd, together accounting for 4,505 of the 8,155 girls given a P name. The letter covers 159 distinct spellings, one of the smaller sets, but the names in it are used heavily.

ONS rank (all girls' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
7	Poppy	1,789	The flower, Old English popaeg from Latin papaver
14	Phoebe	1,542	Greek phoibe, bright or pure, an epithet of Artemis
33	Penelope	1,174	Greek, linked to pene, thread, or to a duck in the older legend; both readings are old
141	Pippa	348	English short form of Philippa, from Greek, lover of horses
196	Primrose	259	The flower, from Latin prima rosa, first rose
204	Polly	242	Medieval English variant of Molly, itself a pet form of Mary
212	Piper	221	English occupational surname for a pipe player
226	Paisley	207	Scottish town in Renfrewshire, probably from Latin basilica, a church
232	Penny	201	English short form of Penelope
258	Pearl	180	The gem, from Latin perna through Old French
337	Philippa	128	Latin feminine of Philip, lover of horses
463	Prisha	86	Modern Indian; usually glossed as beloved, though the reading is recent and disputed

The most used boys' names beginning with P in 2025

For boys P is the smallest letter in the alphabet apart from Q, X and U. Only 2,330 boys were given a P name in 2025, across 121 spellings, and not one of them reaches the top 100. Patrick, the leader, sits at rank 134 with 375 babies, and Peter, once among the most common names in England, is now at 158 registrations.

ONS rank (all boys' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
134	Patrick	375	Latin patricius, nobleman; the patron saint of Ireland
175	Parker	293	English occupational surname for a park keeper
287	Peter	158	Greek petros, stone, translating Aramaic Kephas
287	Phoenix	158	The Greek mythological bird, and a Greek word for the colour crimson
299	Percy	152	Norman surname from Perci in Normandy; also a short form of Percival
529	Prince	73	English title used as a name, from Latin princeps, first citizen
549	Philip	71	Greek Philippos, lover of horses
602	Paul	64	Roman family name Paulus, Latin for small
702	Presley	50	English place name and surname, priest's meadow
716	Paddy	49	Irish pet form of Padraig, that is Patrick, nobleman
735	Percival	47	Old French Perceval, coined in the Arthurian romances; the meaning is disputed
782	Pedro	42	Spanish and Portuguese form of Peter, stone

Which P names are rising and which are falling

Climbing

Every P name with a published figure rose in 2025. Phoebe gained 3 places, Penelope 3 and Poppy 1, and all three are higher than they were in 2015, by 8, 36 and 3 places respectively. That is the whole record. P, V and Y are the only letters where every published name moved upward in both the one-year and the ten-year columns.

Slipping

Nothing in the P lists fell, because only three P names have published movement and all three rose. This is not evidence that the letter is growing overall: the boys' side has no names in the top 100 and therefore no published trajectory at all, and the girls' names below rank 100 are equally unreported.

What the published change columns cannot tell you

Pippa, Primrose, Polly, Piper, Paisley, Penny and Pearl are all below the top 100 on the girls' side, and every single boys' P name is below it. That means the ONS publishes no rank change for any boys' name beginning with P in 2025. Where this page describes the boys' letter, it describes counts and ranks only.

How big a letter P really is

P is thirteenth for girls and twenty-third for boys by babies named. Measured as a ratio it is the most female-weighted letter in the alphabet. For every boy given a P name in England and Wales in 2025 there were roughly three and a half girls. The letter is not small; it is small for boys and substantial for girls.

The girls' letter is also unusually botanical. Poppy, Primrose, Pearl and Paisley are all object or plant names, and together with Piper they show the same word-name pattern that drives Willow, Ivy and Nova elsewhere in the list. The classical group, Penelope, Phoebe, Philippa and Persephone, sits alongside it and is the older layer of the letter.

Further P names in the published 2025 list

The ONS full list does not stop at the tables above, and the counts stay exact all the way down. For girls the next names in order of use are Persephone at 77, Paloma at 73, Peggy at 73, Paige at 68, Pixie at 67, Posie at 62, Priscilla at 56, Pia at 55, Peyton at 53, Phoenix at 50, Pola at 40, Paris at 35. For boys they are Preston at 34, Pranav at 26, Pablo at 23, Parth at 23, Phillip at 23, Pransh at 19, Psalm at 19, Paxton at 18, Palmer at 17, Perry at 16, Pietro at 16, Pavel at 15. Each figure is the exact number of babies registered with that exact spelling during 2025, taken from the ONS full-list table rather than from the top 100. The letter carries 159 different girls' names and 121 different boys' names in the published data altogether, and any name given to two or fewer babies has been removed from it.

Choosing a P name: what the data changes

For a son, a P name in England and Wales is a genuinely uncommon choice: Peter at 158 babies and Philip at 71 are now rarer than many names parents think of as unusual. For a daughter the opposite is true at the top, but Pippa at 348, Polly at 242 and Pearl at 180 sit comfortably outside the crowd while remaining entirely familiar.

Baby names starting with P: girls and boys