The Most Common First Names in Australia

The most common first name in Australia among sole traders is Michael, narrowly ahead of David.

Ranked from the full catalogue of 11.1 million sole-trader ABNs (active + cancelled) · Source: Australian Business Register · Updated September 2026

Across every Australian who has registered as a sole trader — 11.1 million ABNs — more people trade under the first name Michael (131,080 registrations, 1.18%) than any other, in a near dead heat with David (127,899, 1.16%), then John and Peter. The top of the list reads like a roll-call of the names that topped Australian birth certificates from the 1950s to the 1980s — which fits, because a sole trader is typically a mid-career adult and first-name fashion runs a generation behind.

The 50 most common sole-trader first names in Australia

	First name	Sole traders	Share
1	Michael	131,080	1.18%
2	David	127,899	1.16%
3	John	115,094	1.04%
4	Peter	103,537	0.94%
5	Robert	84,726	0.77%
6	Andrew	81,214	0.73%
7	Daniel	79,195	0.72%
8	Matthew	77,694	0.70%
9	James	77,320	0.70%
10	Paul	76,333	0.69%
11	Christopher	75,983	0.69%
12	Mark	73,394	0.66%
13	Anthony	55,294	0.50%
14	Stephen	53,740	0.49%
15	Benjamin	48,787	0.44%
16	Thomas	46,387	0.42%
17	William	45,949	0.42%
18	Sarah	44,064	0.40%
19	Jason	43,034	0.39%
20	Joshua	42,810	0.39%
21	Steven	40,274	0.36%
22	Adam	39,843	0.36%
23	Jessica	39,665	0.36%
24	Richard	39,423	0.36%
25	Nicholas	38,852	0.35%
26	Luke	36,964	0.33%
27	Timothy	35,465	0.32%
28	Michelle	35,292	0.32%
29	Scott	34,731	0.31%
30	Ian	34,632	0.31%
31	Jennifer	34,040	0.31%
32	Rebecca	33,682	0.30%
33	Gregory	30,179	0.27%
34	Craig	29,705	0.27%
35	Elizabeth	29,643	0.27%
36	Maria	29,590	0.27%
37	Susan	29,543	0.27%
38	Kevin	29,131	0.26%
39	Nathan	29,121	0.26%
40	Simon	28,232	0.26%
41	Lisa	28,088	0.25%
42	Samuel	28,030	0.25%
43	Karen	27,815	0.25%
44	Shane	27,799	0.25%
45	Emma	27,349	0.25%
46	Joseph	26,985	0.24%
47	Brian	26,945	0.24%
48	Ryan	26,347	0.24%
49	Amanda	25,936	0.23%
50	Nicole	25,930	0.23%

What the numbers say

Michael and David are almost tied at the top (1.18% and 1.16%) — the only two names above 1.1%, with John (1.04%) the only other past 1%.
A generational fingerprint. The top ten are the boys’ names that peaked between roughly 1950 and 1985 — the cohort that has spent the register’s history in its self-employment prime.
More concentrated than surnames. The top ten first names cover 8.6% of all sole traders (versus 4.1% for surnames) — first-name variety is far narrower than surname variety.
Women’s names appear from #18 (Sarah), then Jessica (#23), Michelle (#28), Jennifer (#31) and a cluster of Elizabeth/Maria/Susan in the 30s. The skew reflects who sole-trades — male-dominated trades — more than the population; many women-led businesses register as companies or partnerships instead.

Methodology

The Australian Business Register’s bulk extract lists every ABN ever issued. We use the entire catalogue of ABNs registered as an Individual/Sole Trader — people trading under their own legal name — both active and cancelled: 11,095,506 sole-trader ABNs in all. Taking the full history (rather than only the ~4.3 million currently active) gives the broadest possible sample, spanning everyone who has registered as a sole trader across the life of the register. Companies, trusts, partnerships and super funds are excluded because their names aren’t personal names.

ABR stores each name as one uppercase string in first-to-last order (e.g. MATTHEW JOHN HICKEY). We took the first whitespace-separated token as the given name. Records with only one token, or whose relevant token was a single-letter initial or non-alphabetic, were skipped, leaving about 11.06 million valid names. We read the first registered token literally and don’t fold nicknames into formal names (Matt/Matthew, Mike/Michael are counted separately), so the true popularity of the leading names is if anything understated. Counts are of ABN registrations, not distinct people — a person who has held more than one ABN is counted each time.

See the most common surnames → · Search any Australian business, ABN or name →

Data: Australian Business Register (ABN bulk extract), © Commonwealth of Australia, licensed CC BY, via data.gov.au. Analysis by Uplook — free to cite with a link to this page. Figures are a snapshot and shift as ABNs are registered and cancelled. This is general reference only, not the official register — see our disclaimer.