777 Icelanders Have Christmas Eve Birthdays

Christmas Eve is one of the most uncommon times of the year for giving birth in Iceland, with 777 Icelanders sharing December 24 as their birthday, a pre-Christmas announcement from the National Registry reveals.

In all, 627 adult Icelanders and 150 children under 18 have been born on December 24, and the Registry took it upon themselves to outline what the most common gendered names for these Christmas babies have been.

Adam is the most common name for babies assigned male at birth on Christmas Eve, with 15 in all. This is followed by Jón (10) and Sigurður (9), which are the two most common names for babies in Iceland assigned male at birth, with Adam not even cracking the top 20.

Amongst babies assigned female at birth, Guðrún and Kristín tied for first at 12 each, followed by Margrét, Helga and Sigríður, at eight each. Any other day of the year, Guðrún and Kristín are in first and third place, respectively.

The graph that accompanies the Registry’s announcement shows how many people were born on what day of the year, with December 24-26 highlighted in red. As can be seen, Christmas births are considerably less common than births most other days of the year. As late September has the highest number of births, one can surmise that the late December holidays are primarily a time for conception in Iceland.