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Baby name popularity by year, 1880–2025

How popular 179 baby names have been in the U.S., year by year from 1880 to 2025, from the Social Security Administration’s records of every name given to at least 5 babies.

Each name has its own page with a chart, its births and rank in every year, a decade-by-decade account, and the year it peaked. Each decade has a page too, with its top 20 girls’ and boys’ names and how they differed from the decade before.

All-time classics

The names given to the most babies across every year since 1880.

Top names by decade

1880s · 1890s · 1900s · 1910s · 1920s · 1930s · 1940s · 1950s · 1960s · 1970s · 1980s · 1990s · 2000s · 2010s · 2020s

Peak, not just popularity

A name’s peak here is the year it went to its largest share of babies of one sex, not the year the most babies got it. Far more babies were born in some years than others, so counting babies alone would pull nearly every name’s peak toward the 1946–1964 baby boom. Baby Boom, the daily game these pages come from, uses the same measure.

Source: the U.S. Social Security Administration’s national baby name data, from Social Security card applications for babies born in the U.S. A name is left out of a year when fewer than 5 babies of one sex got it, and counts before about 1937 are incomplete, because many people born then never applied for a card. See how Baby Boom builds its data. Figures may contain errors.