The distribution of the top ten forenames and surnames for male and female births which occurred in 2015 is
presented in Table 10 on page 20.The process of deriving the top ten forenames and surnames entailed summing up the frequencies for each forename and surname and ranking them from the highest frequency to the lowest frequency. The table shows that the most popular forename for males was Junior, followed by Blessing and Gift.
Amongst females, the first three most common forenames were Precious, Princess and Angel, in that order. Melokuhle was the seventh most popular forename for both males and females. Blessing also featured in the top ten forenames for both sexes (second amongst males and eighth amongst females). It is noteworthy that, whereas most of the forenames were from the Nguni languages namely isiZulu, isiXhosa, isiNdebele and siSwati, the first three forenames for both males and females were English names. The most popular forenames in 2015 are generally expressions of pride, joy, thankfulness and appear to be religiously influenced.
The most common surname for both sexes was Dlamini, followed by Nkosi and Ndlovu. The top ten surnames generally come from the Nguni clans. The only non-Nguni surname that was in the top ten in 2015 was Mokoena and it occupied the sixth position.
