Arthur has entered the top 10 boys’ names for the first time in almost a century, with the television gangster series Peaky Blinders believed to be the inspiration for some of the most popular baby names.

While Arthur was the only new entry in the top 10 names for boys in 2018, replacing Jacob, Sophia and Grace replaced Poppy and Lily among the top 10 names for girls, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

“Oliver and Olivia remained the most popular baby names in 2018, although there are the first signs that Oliver’s six-year reign as the number one name for boys is under threat,” Nick Stripe, the head of life events at the ONS, said.

“Arthur surged into the top 10 boys’ names for the first time since the 1920s, and Ada jumped into the girls’ top 100 for the first time in a century too, both perhaps inspired by characters in the BBC TV drama Peaky Blinders.”

The names Ada and Arthur, popular in the early 1900s, appear to be undergoing a renaissance, with Peaky Blinders, which is currently airing its fifth series, featuring characters with those names.

Ada climbed 49 places to become the 65th most popular name for girls in 2018 – the second largest rise within the top 100 names. Arthur has been rising within the top 100 names for boys since 2009 and was the seventh most popular name for boys last year.

Despite ranking in 255th place, the name Cillian – Peaky Blinders’ lead character, Thomas Shelby, is played by the actor Cillian Murphy – has also been steadily growing in popularity, rising 295 places in the last five years.

Olivia was the most popular name for girls in England and Wales, while Oliver was outranked by Muhammad in four of the nine English regions, and by Harry in north-east England.

Grayson, Rowan and Tobias entered the top 100 names for boys in 2018 for the first time, while the girls’ names Delilah, Ayla and Margot – which rose fastest of all the most popular names – also made their first appearance among the 62,729 different names given to 657,076 newborns last year.

The birth rate was at its lowest for 80 years with 657,076 live births, a decrease of 3.2% on 2017 and 9.9% since 2012.

Archie, the name of the son of Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex, was the fourth most popular name chosen by mothers under 25. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Stripe added: “On the flipside, the growth in the use of technology assistants in our homes may help to explain why the number of baby girls named Alexa has more than halved compared with 2017. Communicating with young children can be hard enough at the best of times.”

For the first time, the ONS also analysed how names vary depending on the age of the baby’s mother. Those aged 35 years and above tended to prefer more traditional names, compared with mothers under 25 who were more likely to choose non-traditional, shortened or hyphenated names.

Archie, the name of Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex’s child, was the fourth most popular name for mothers under 25, far more popular than for mothers over 35.

Hunter, the 44th most popular boys’ name in 2018, rose 34 places on the previous year. Amelia continued to be the second most common name for baby girls while Ava rose from fourth place in 2017 to third in 2018, swapping places with Isla.

Fewer than half (45%) of babies had a name within the top 100 lists in 2018, down from two-thirds (67%) in 1996. More than 40,000 babies were given a name that occurred just once in 2018 and 18 children were registered without a name.

Girls

1 Olivia 4,598 (0)

2 Amelia 3,941 (0)

3 Ava 3,110 (+1)

4 Isla 3,046 (-1)

5 Emily 2,676 (0)

6 Mia 2,490 (+1)

7 Isabella 2,369 (-1)

8 Sophia 2,344 (+3)

9 Ella 2,326 (0)

10 Grace 2,301 (+3)

Boys

1 Oliver 5,390 (0)

2 George 4,960 (+1)

3 Harry 4,512 (-1)

4 Noah 4,107 (0)

5 Jack 3,988 (0)

6 Leo 3,721 (+1)

7 Arthur 3,644 (+12)

8 Muhammad 3,507 (+2)

9 Oscar 3,459 (-1)

10 Charlie 3,365 (-1)