The Most Popular US Baby Names, and What "Popular" Actually Means
The SSA releases new name data each May. Here is how to read it — and why the published top ten is not quite the top ten.
· 7 min read
Every May, the Social Security Administration publishes the previous year’s baby name counts, and every May the same list goes around: the top ten boy names, the top ten girl names, a few notes about which celebrity moved which name. It is a good list. It is also measuring something narrower than most people assume.
The published ranking counts spellings, not names
The SSA ranks spellings. Sophia and Sofia are two entries. Aiden, Aidan, Ayden, Aden and Aidyn are five. If a name is commonly written several ways, its true footprint is split across several rows and every one of those rows ranks lower than the name deserves.
This is not a small effect. On this site, spellings that share a pronunciation are grouped into one name, and the reordering is substantial: names with many accepted spellings climb, while names with only one way to write them stay put. A name that looks like it sits at number forty in the official list can be inside the top twenty once you count the children who actually answer to it.
Which ranking is “right” depends on your question. If you want to know how many classmates will write their name the same way, the SSA’s spelling-level ranking is the one you want. If you want to know how many children will answer to the same sound when a teacher calls across a playground, you want the grouped one.
Rank is a terrible measure of how common a name is
Rank compresses enormous differences. The gap between the first and tenth most popular name is usually larger than the gap between the tenth and the hundredth. A name ranked 200th is not “half as common” as one ranked 100th — it is often a small fraction as common.
Look at the counts instead. Every name page here shows total births and the year-by-year series behind them, precisely because the rank on its own hides the shape.
A single year is noise; a decade is a signal
Year-to-year movement in the middle of the list is mostly noise. A name can jump thirty places on a few hundred births. What is worth reading is direction over ten years or more: is the last decade bigger than the one before it, and by how much?
That is the comparison the trends page runs, and it is the one that separates a name on the way up from a name having a good year.
Popularity is regional, and the national list hides that
The national file aggregates the whole country. A name can be unremarkable nationally and extremely common in one state or one community. If your concern is how many other children in a specific classroom will share the name, the national ranking is a rough proxy at best.
What to do with the May release
- Read counts, not ranks. Ranks are ordinal; they tell you the order, not the distance.
- Check whether the name has common alternative spellings. If it does, add them up before concluding it is rare.
- Compare the last decade against the previous one rather than last year against the year before.
- Remember that the data covers births with Social Security numbers, at least five per name per year per sex. Names given to fewer than five children in a year do not appear at all.
The full methodology, including how spellings are grouped and what is excluded, is on the methodology page.