Methodology and sources

Where the numbers come from

Every count, rank, share and peak year on this site comes from the US Social Security Administration baby name files. The national file covers 1880 to 2024. The state files cover each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. SSA builds them from applications for Social Security cards for babies born in the United States.

SSA leaves out any name given to fewer than five babies of one sex in a year, to protect privacy. Very rare names therefore show zero in years when they were in fact used. SSA also records names without accents, spaces or hyphens.

How each figure is calculated

• Share girls is the number of girls given a name divided by all babies given that name, in the same year or years. “Is it a boy or girl name?” answers lead with the newest year and then give the all-time share.
• Rank orders every name SSA published for one sex in one year by the number of babies, so #1 is the most given name. Ties are broken alphabetically. Ranks go well past the top 1,000.
• Most popular year is the year with the most babies of either sex given the name.
• Name pages come in two kinds. The 7,923 names with at least 2,000 babies in total or at least 100 in 2024 get a full statistics page with charts and ranks. Every other name in our lists gets a basic page that states only what the lists record: whether it is listed for boys, girls or both, the countries where it is recorded, its labels, and a US total when SSA has one. Basic pages never show a meaning or origin. We ask search engines to index a basic page only when the name has a US birth count, is recorded in two or more countries, or carries a label. The rest, mostly names gathered with automated tools, stay open to visitors but are marked noindex and left out of the sitemap.
• Names from the same era peaked in the same decade and have a similar total number of babies.
• Switched names went from under 35% girls to over 65% girls, or the reverse, measured over five-year windows. See names that switched.
• State comparisons divide a name’s share of a state’s babies by its share of all US babies in the same year, counting only names with at least 30 babies in the state.

Lists, labels and countries

The browsing lists (boy names, girl names, unique names and names by country) combine SSA names with the World Gender Name Dictionary, which links given names to the countries where they are recorded and to how often each is used for men and women. A country link means a name is recorded there. It is not a ranking: outside the US we do not yet have official counts, so country lists are not ordered by popularity.

Some lists also contain names gathered with automated tools. These have not been checked against an official register, carry no counts, and are never used in any statistic, chart or report on this site.

Labels are rules on the SSA counts: Rising means at least 400 babies a year recently and 50% more than in 1996–2005; Vintage means the name peaked before 1971 and is now under 30% of that peak; Classic means 50 or more years of use and at least 200 babies in the newest year; Unique means ranked below 500 with fewer than 250 babies. Short, Strong and Soft describe spelling and sound only.

What the data cannot tell you

The numbers describe US births only, and only names as SSA spells them, so Sofia and Sophia are counted separately. They do not cover meaning or origin. We only show those where we can cite a source, rather than guess. The Chinese gender calendar and baby gender predictor are folklore tools and are labeled that way.

Download and reuse

The per-name figures behind the name pages are available as a CSV file under CC BY 4.0. Please credit “Boy or Girl Names, from SSA data” with a link to this page. Found a mistake? Tell us.