Almost 1 million births in SA the most popular baby GIRL name is …

According to the Recorded Live Births 2021 report released on Monday by Statistics South Africa, almost one million births occurred in 2021.

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A total of 1 087 526 births were registered in 2021.

Of those, 949 757 (87.3%) were registrations for births that occurred in the year, while 137 769 (12.7%) were late registrations for births that occurred in previous years.

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The most popular baby names were Lethabo and Melokuhle for boys and girls, respectively.

Amongst males, the top three most popular forenames were Lethabo, followed by Lubanzi and Melokuhle.

The most common forenames for females were Melokuhle, followed by Omphile and Iminathi.

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For both sexes, Dlamini was the most common baby surname in 2021, followed by Nkosi and Ndlovu.

Meanwhile, of note was the increasing number of teenage mothers in 2021.

A total of 45 257 births were from mothers aged 17 years and younger and of these, 42 were births from mothers between the ages of 11 and 12.

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Generally, birth registrations remain higher in the most populated provinces in South Africa.

The highest proportion of births were registered in Gauteng (21.4%), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (20.4%). Provinces with lower birth registrations in 2021 were Northern Cape at 2.7% and Free State at 5.0%.

For more information, download the full report here.

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