Celtic baby names across all six Celtic languages

What Celtic actually means

Celtic is a branch of the Indo-European language family, and six of its languages are alive today. They fall into two groups. Goidelic, or Q-Celtic, contains Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. Brythonic, or P-Celtic, contains Welsh, Cornish and Breton. The split is ancient, and it left a sound correspondence that runs right through the names: where Goidelic has a c or k sound, Brythonic often has a p.

That single fact turns a scattered list into a family tree. Irish mac, son, corresponds to Welsh map and its later form ap. Irish ceathair, four, corresponds to Welsh pedwar. Names follow the same rule, which is why several pairs that look unconnected are the same name arriving down two different roads.

The cognate pairs

Fionn and Gwyn are the clearest case. Fionn mac Cumhaill in Irish and Gwyn ap Nudd in Welsh both carry an element meaning fair or white that is also a word for blessed, and the two names are the same word in two languages that stopped being one language a very long time ago.

The elements worth knowing

Six roots account for a large share of Celtic names across all six languages. Ri or rig is a king, giving Rian, Rory, Riordan and, in the Brythonic branch, names ending in -rix in the old inscriptions. Mor or mori is the sea, giving Muireann, Morwenna, Meriadoc and Murrough. Cath is battle, giving Cathal and Cathleen. Dubh is black, giving Duff and Dubhghall. Aed is fire, giving Aidan and Aodh. Bran is a raven, giving Bran, Brannock and Brendan's near-neighbours.

Manx names, which almost nobody lists

Manx Gaelic is the language of the Isle of Man. Its last first-language speaker of the old generation died in the twentieth century, and it has since been revived to the point where children are educated through it. Manx spelling was devised on English rather than Irish conventions, which is why Manx names look unlike their Irish cousins even when they are the same name.

Breton names, which are not French

Breton is spoken in Brittany, and it arrived there from Britain rather than the other way round: it is closer to Cornish and Welsh than to anything in France. French registrars restricted Breton names for much of the twentieth century, and the loosening of those rules is recent enough that Breton naming still carries some of that history.

Gwenaël pairs the fair element with a word for generous. Maiwenn, Nolwenn and Enora are women's names built on the same gwen root that gives Welsh Gwen. Erwan is the Breton form of Yves. Tanguy is tan, fire, plus ki, dog — which sounds odd translated and is a perfectly ordinary Breton name in daily use.

Where these names stand in Britain now

The Celtic names doing best in the official data are the Irish and Scottish ones. In the ONS figures for England and Wales in 2025, released on 9 July 2026, Isla was 4th with 1,959 babies, Maeve 26th with 1,330, Rory 17th with 1,760 and Finley 18th with 1,733. In Scotland, National Records of Scotland recorded Freya as the most popular girls' name for 2025 — a Norse name rather than a Gaelic one, which is a useful corrective to the idea that Scottish naming is Gaelic naming. Welsh, Cornish, Manx and Breton names sit much further down all of these lists.

The Celtic names that are not Celtic

Several names sold as Celtic are not. Kayla, Kayleigh and Kaylee are twentieth-century English coinages with no Irish source, despite the way they are marketed. Erin is the English form of Éirinn, a case form of the name for Ireland, so it is a country name rather than a personal one in Irish. Tara is the hill in County Meath and was never a traditional Irish given name; it became one through American use. Casey and Shannon are Irish surnames and a river respectively. None of this makes them bad names. It makes the meanings printed beside them unreliable.

In the opposite direction, several names nobody thinks of as Celtic are: Arthur, whose derivation is disputed but is often traced to a Celtic word for bear, was 5th in England and Wales in 2025 with 3,211 babies, and Gavin comes from Welsh Gwalchmai by way of Old French.

Pronunciation across six languages

Each of these languages has regular spelling rules; none of them is English's rules. That is why Irish and Welsh names look difficult to English readers and are not difficult to Irish and Welsh readers. We give pronunciation help only where a language authority or a national broadcaster supplies it, and we do not invent respellings for Cornish, Manx or Breton, where the accessible authorities are thinner and the risk of teaching the wrong sound is real.