Catholic Baby Names: Our Top 100 Picks for Girls and Boys

Are you looking for a Catholic baby name for your little blessing? Popular Catholic names for girls include Mary, Elizabeth, Anne, Lucy, and Catherine. If you're having a boy, names like John, Joseph, Dominic, Thomas and Matthew are steeped in Catholic tradition. Combination names like Mary Jane and John Paul also come across as very Catholic.

But you sure don't have to stick to the classics. Catholic baby names run the gamut, from traditional Catholic names like Mary and John to modern favorites like Gianna and Lucas to rare (but very Catholic) choices like Benedicta and Pius. For a cornucopia of ideas, check out our collection of Catholic girl names if you're having a baby girl, or our A to Z list of Catholic boy names if you're looking for a name for a boy.

In fact, the only major rule the Roman Catholic Church currently has about naming babies is that the name given at baptism should not be "foreign to Christian sensibility" (as per the 1983 Code of Canon Law, Can. No. 855). What this basically means is that any name is fine, as long as it doesn't have negative connotations from a Christian perspective. The Canon also stipulates that if the parents pick an offensive name, the priest and the godparents have the responsibility to intervene.

While the 1983 Code has brought tens of thousands of options to the table, many Catholic parents still favor names that are imbued with spiritual meaning, or that are rooted in Catholic tradition. That usually means names borrowed from saints or notable New Testament figures.

Below, you'll find our top 100 Catholic baby name picks for girls and boys. Here, we've focused on saint names and New Testament names, but we also have entire sections on Old Testament girl names and Old Testament boy names, if that's what's what you're interested in. Also modern biblical boy names and modern biblical girl names, as well as our intriguing list biblical place names with baby name potential might be worth exploring—if you don't find your perfect name below: