Jack has emerged once again as the most popular name for boys born in Ireland, in official data published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) for 2024.
Jack has reigned supreme on the baby-name ladder every year since 2007, with the exception of 2016, when James briefly took the top slot.
Jack Dwyer, now aged 12, was only a few months old when his mother Susan Dwyer realised the name was everywhere. While aware Jack was a statistically popular name, Dwyer says she had “never really heard it that much; I never knew loads of kids called Jack” before choosing the name for her son.
“We were on holidays about three months later and there were six babies around the pool. Five of them were boys the same age, only a couple of months old, and all five were called Jack. They were all Irish. I was like, ‘No – what have we done?‘”
A similar episode occurred in a playground a few years later. “I called Jack and about five kids came running over,” recalls Dwyer, who lives in Shankill in Dublin with her husband Dave and Jack’s big brother Michael.
“Every year, I keep thinking, when the polls come out about the most popular names, surely it can’t still be number one. When he was small I was kind of worried half the class would be called Jack but that’s not what has happened.”
Despite feeling “always conscious of there being so many Jacks”, Dwyer says she is relieved to report that this hasn’t yet manifested in her son’s school classes.
“The name just does really suit him so I don’t have any regrets. Now we wouldn’t change it, but if you asked me that when he was six months old ...”
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Noeleen Leddy, who lives in Naas, Co Kildare, remembers the moment she and her husband also decided to name their son Jack.
“I know exactly where we were. We were on the M4 coming out of Dublin and we were moving back towards Naas. I was probably half way through the pregnancy ... suggesting names and it was the first of my suggestions that my husband liked.”
Leddy “couldn’t imagine him being called anything else”. “It’s totally right for him. The name would give him hopefully a sort of warm, friendly personality and certainly he had that.”
“Jack O’Dwyer sounds like a good solid name and it can’t be shortened really,” says Leddy, who took how the name would sound paired with her husband’s surname into consideration.
Having previously worked in London, Leddy says “it’s a name that could travel easily as well if he was abroad, whereas sometimes I know it can be harder to pronounce some Irish names”.
Other baby names she considered were Tadhg and Daniel.
“Interestingly, there is a Tadhg in his class and there’s already two Daniels,” says Leddy, while her Jack, now aged eight, is the sole Jack in his class at St Corban’s Boys National School in Naas.
The plus side of it being so common is that there’s lots of representation of Jack, whether its in fairytales and movies, like climbing beanstalks, or Pirates of the Caribbean, the Titanic. It allows you as a child to relate to a lot of people
— Jack Conneely
Leddy has seen the name’s popularity in other settings. She recalls collecting her son one day from an art activity camp he attends. “The girl called ‘Jack’ and three kids turned around. All the mums were standing, laughing. We all were like, ‘You’ve great taste in names’ to each other.”
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Leddy says she “didn’t think it would be that popular”. “I was slightly surprised to see it at the top of the list,” she says, but this has not been off-putting.
Twenty-five-year-old Jack Conneely, from Dublin, was named after his paternal grandfather. “He passed away when I was one. I think he was probably quite sick when my mum was pregnant with me so that was part of the emotion behind it all,” he says.
Conneely recalls feeling “quite unsettled” by the association as a child, but over time it has become something he wears with pride. “My relationship with the name Jack was seeing my full name on a tombstone or hearing it at a memorial sermon. But now it feels like quite an honour to have his name. It’s a lovely way to have a connection with someone I unfortunately didn’t get to spend a lot of time with.”
Conneely says he has been “very cognisant of the fact that it’s a very popular name”.
“For years I didn’t like the name Jack that much because I thought it was too common or plain,” he says. “I always wanted a nicknameable name ... Now, I guess, I see it way less as a loss of individuality and more in a kind of comedic way, some sort of thread of a made-up community of Jacks around the world, or around Ireland in particular.”
Now living in London, Conneely says the majority of Jacks he encounters there are Irish.
Growing up, he enjoyed being able to relate to several fictional characters who shared the name. “The plus side of it being so common is that there’s lots of representation of Jack, whether its in fairytales and movies, like climbing beanstalks, or Pirates of the Caribbean, the Titanic. It allows you as a child to relate to a lot of people.”
Conneely recalls one childhood friendship initially forged through little other than a shared name. “I used to have this friend in primary school who was in the other class to me and I think we were placed in different classes because we were both called Jack. I invited him to all my birthday parties as a child, because I thought ‘Oh his name is Jack, we must be friends’, even if we don’t have that much in common. I was always into music and art and he was always into sports, more so, but that was our commonality.”
Like Conneely, Jack Gilchrist from Kilkenny is living in England. The 22-year-old says that since moving to Cambridge, where he is completing a master’s, he hasn’t met any other Jacks.This has been a “refreshing” change.
“I remember in my first-year class in secondary school, in a class of 30, there were six of us named Jack. So what is that, like one fifth?”
One of his classmates also shared a surname beginning with G. Thankfully for Gilchrist, “it never caused many issues” and the group “went by second names to avoid confusion”.
Like Conneely, a lack of nicknaming potential proved slightly disappointing but Gilchrist says he “always liked” being called Jack. While his first name is not inherited from any family members, Gilchrist said his middle name, Andrew, is taken from his father.
He says the name Jack came to his mother in a dream, as did his younger sister Sarah’s. “Mam had a dream that she was going to have a son named Jack and a daughter named Sarah, and then she did.”
