Popular Baby Names

Just Announced May 2012 ---Top 10 Baby Names for 2011

Between 1954 and 1984 the Social Security Administration occasionally published a listing of surnames and their popularity in the Report of Distribution of Surnames in the Social Security Number File. This note expands on that project by presenting the most popular given names.

The source file is a one percent sample of Social Security Number card applications. The selection criteria is based on the last four digits of the Social Security Number, which are random and not correlated with a particular geographical region. In cases where multiple cards were issued to the same person, a reason for this might be a lost card or a name change, the name on the last application was used. This file is not limited to persons born in the United States but is representative of all Social Security Number card holders.

For purposes of this document, names have not been edited or grouped together according to spelling variations of the same baby names. People quoting from this document are urged to explicitly acknowledge this qualification.

Three tabulations are presented in this note. The first two are an historical perspective on the three most frequent names for both sexes for every year of birth from 1900 to 1997. The third is the 40 most frequent names for boys and girls born in 1996, the most recent year that full data is available.

• Top 10 given names, by year of birth (1880-1919), and sex.
• Top 10 given names, by year of birth (1920-1959), and sex.
• Top 10 given names, by year of birth (1960-1997), and sex.
• Large list of names for girls born in 1996.
• Large list of names for boys born in 1996.
• Large list of names for girls born in 1997.
• Large list of names for boys born in 1997.

Table 1 displays the three most frequent male given names for each year of birth from 1900 to 1997. The number to the right of each name indicates the frequency in the sample per 1,000 births of the same gender.

Table 2 displays the three most frequent female given names for each year of birth from 1900 to 1997. The number to the right of each name indicates the frequency in the sample per 1,000 births of the same gender.

Table 3 lists the 40 most popular given names for the year of birth of 1996. The sample consists of 19,662 girls and 20,264 boys. The numbers on the left represent rank. The number to the right of each name represents the frequency per 1,000 births of the same gender. Several times in this table there were ties in popularity order. In these cases the order and frequency are given for the first name and left blank in subsequent names.