Malaga is the province with the most Shakiras and Beyoncés in Spain

Nuria Triguero

Málaga

Thursday, 10 July 2025, 12:58

The ranking compiled by Spain's national institute of statistics (INE) confirms, year after year, that Malaga is the least traditional province in the Andalucía region when it comes to naming children. For example, only 6% of babies inherit their father's or mother's name, compared to the regional average of almost 10%. Moreover, the ranking of the most popular names differs from the rest of Andalucía: here, the classic María and Manuel no longer reign, having been replaced by Sofía and Hugo.

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María is no longer the most popular name for newborn girls in Malaga province: this one has replaced it

Of course, it's one thing to be untraditional and another to name your baby Shakira. Following modern trends and times, Malaga also leads the ranking in replacing saints' names with names of the 'saints' of today - celebrities from the world of show business and sports. Malaga is the province with the most Shakiras: 50, representing 8% of the 636 Shakiras in the whole country. Barcelona has 49 and Madrid 42. The average age of the girls named after the Colombian singer is 19. Shakira's hit album Fijación oral came out 20 years ago, so you can make the assumptions. The boys born in Malaga province named after Shakira's son Milan are 76 and their average age is 13.

Let's go with another world-ranking diva: Beyoncé. There are fewer people with this unique name: 23 in the whole of Spain. Malaga does not disappoint as the place with the highest density of Beyoncés: five, with an average age of 14 years.

Somewhat older are the girls whose 'millennial' parents named them after Operación Triunfo contestant and famous Spanish artist Chenoa: the average age of the 289 people called Chenoa in Spain is almost 20 years old. The first edition of Operación Triunfo, in which Chenoa participated, premiered 24 years ago. 17 of the Chenoas were born in Malaga province.

Last but not least come the Rihannas - 263 people in Spain in total and 13 in Malaga, followed in numbers by Madrid, Barcelona, Murcia and Granada. The average age of this group is 8 years.

The world of television also serves for inspiration. The last episode of Game of Thrones was on 19 May 2019. Coincidentally, the average age of the 1,807 Aryas and the 1,769 Arias in Spain is four years. In this ranking, however, Malaga comes after Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Alicante, with 70 Aryas and 50 Arias. The name Daenerys repeats 286 times in Spain, with an average age of the group closer to five. Of these girls, only 11 are in Malaga province. Since the INE only considers names with a frequency of at least five on a provincial level, if there are any girls with the name Khaleesi in Spain, they must be very few, as the name does not appear in the official statistics.

Girls are not the only ones to borrow the names of famous people or characters. The parents of boys, however, are very keen on the world of football. Malaga province, for example, has 63 Lionels, with an average age of 23. It is the Canary Islands that leads the ranking with this name: 207 Lionels are from Las Palmas, more than in Barcelona, which has only 97.

Las Palmas also leads the Neymar ranking, with 46 of the 247 in Spain. Malaga comes immediately after, with 27 boys, with an average age of eight years.

The highest percentage of footballer names is owed to Real Madrid. There are almost 50,000 people named after former goalkeeper Iker Casillas, with an average age of 18 years. Can you guess how many years ago Spain won the first European Championship? In Malaga province, there are almost 1,000 Ikeres. Despite the footballer's retirement, his fame still echoed among the newborns of 2024 - the name was among the 50 most frequent baby names in the province last year.

Real Madrid's Kylian is also a modern inspiration: there are 1,082 people with his name in Spain, with an average age of just four years. Curiously, Barcelona is the province with the highest frequency of this name (122), followed by Madrid (107) and in third place? Malaga with 96. In fact, last year Kylian was number 58 in the ranking of the most frequent names among babies born in Malaga.