For years, the names Juan and José were given to many babies born in Catalonia, hence the popular saying "There are Juans, Josés, and donkeys in every house." But in recent decades, this trend has reversed. In the case of Josep, after a boom in the 1950s and 60s, when more than 15,000 babies were given this name, its popularity plummeted from the 2000s onward: from 2010 to 2019, only 602 babies were named Josep, and between 2010 and 2019, only 109.

If there's a name that evokes Christmas, it's Noel: it's of French origin and comes from the word Christmas, what does it mean ChristmasHowever, it's not a popular name. There are only 6,745 men with this name in Spain, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), with an average age of 21.9 years. The highest concentration of men with this name is found in Galicia, Asturias, León, and Cáceres. In Catalonia, there are 1,202 men named Noel; a quarter of them were born between 2010 and 2019, and more than half were born after 2000. The most common regions are Garraf, the Lleida regions (Pallars Jussà, Pla d'Urgell, Urgell, and Segrià), and Segrià. "This points to the influence of Galician immigration, even though it's a name associated with relatively young people," says Francesc Calafell, a researcher at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF). "In some sparsely populated areas, such as Pallars Jussà or Pla d'Urgell, with just two or three, the frequency skyrockets," he adds.