Sarah (646) and Michael (722) were New Zealand's most registered names in 1981. Below are the top 50 girls' and boys' names for the year. See the whole 1980s for context.
About this data: figures come from Department of Internal Affairs birth registrations for 1954-2025. The DIA only publishes a name for a given year when at least 10 babies were registered with it, so rarer names - and rarer spellings - are missing entirely, and a name can drop out of the record in quieter years. Spelling variants are counted separately, and counts reflect first names as registered.