Wallflowers, Rocketships, and Zombies: 29 ways to measure baby name popularity

Most articles about popular baby names are boring. They usually just list top names by gender, with better ones sometimes exploring state-level rankings.

We can do much, much better.

Instead, I took 145 years of Social Security Administration name data and found out way more than you ever wanted to know about name popularity.

A quick note on the data: the SSA excludes names given to fewer than five babies in any year, and early records are incomplete. It’s best to treat anything pre-1920 as directionally accurate rather than 100% true.

The Hall of Fame

The Heavyweights

First, let’s find the heaviest hitters. I totaled every baby since 1880 to see which names have dominated over the last 145 years.

The gap between boys and girls is striking. Mary earns a respectable 7th place in mixed rankings, but other girls’ names fall way behind. This tracks with a general trend: girls’ names are much more diverse, which dilutes the popularity of each name.

Here’s the comparison of total boy vs. girl names over the 145-year period.

The Dynasties

The picture looks a little different when we focus on rankings rather than totals. In 145 years, only 12 names have ever reached the peak of the mixed-gender rankings, with Mary continuing to dominate.

Looking at top rankings within each gender, John and Michael are tied for first place, despite John only coming in first 5 times in mixed rankings. This suggests it was the most popular boys’ name in years when a girls’ name (probably Mary) took the top spot.

It’s also noteworthy that James only topped the rankings 10 times overall and 13 times for boys despite holding the overall human record.

The Old Faithfuls

It makes sense that the names above have remarkable staying power, but I wanted to explore some less-popular names that have stayed surprisingly consistent over the entire naming period.

These names have shown up in at least 75 out of 145 years and never cracked the top 25 in gendered rankings, yet their best and worst ranks stay relatively close together without dramatic swings in either direction.

Moving down another step in popularity, I wanted to find the names that flirted with the top but never broke through. These names have appeared at least 100 out of 145 years, but their best rank peaked between #150 and #500.

The Wallflowers

Now it’s time to dial up the consistency and dial down the popularity. These are the least popular names with perfect attendance, showing up in all 145 years.

Many of the boys’ names are common last names used as first names, which ironically feels like a modern trend. Maybe some of these names are due for a resurgence!

The Shooting Stars

The Supernovas

Most of the top 10 names of all time have an unfair advantage: they’ve been around forever and had more time to accumulate large totals. So I divided the total count by the number of years each name appeared to see what changed.

For boys, the answer was “nothing.” For girls, the order shifted slightly, with Jennifer jumping from 4th to 2nd place.

To make things more interesting, I looked further down the list by filtering for the highest averages among names appearing in 101–144 years. While the previous list is timeless, some of these names start to feel specific to a particular time period.

Continuing on, here are the names appearing in 51–100 years. These feel even more tied to a specific era than the names above.

At 26-50 years, some names become variations on the same basic theme. Six of the ten names rhyme with at least one other name on the list!

When it comes to names that appear 25 years or fewer, the averages predictably drop to their lowest levels. Some of these names could continue to grow in popularity, but it’s just as likely they flame out.

The Rocketships

Averages measure sustained popularity, but let’s turn our focus to rapid growth. These names started out with low popularity (rank >= 1,000) but climbed into the top 250 in the fewest years.

To give a little context, here are a few examples of the names that landed near rank 1,000 in the year 2024: Aubrie, Kyomi, Eleni, Marcello, Bastian, and Turner. The girls’ names were used about 255 times each, while the boys’ names were used about 224 times each.

Even more impressive? The names that debuted above rank 1,000 and broke the top 25 in record time.

Nevaeh (which is heaven spelled backwards) is the GOAT for this category. Going from obscurity in 1997 to dominance in 2010 is no small feat!

Seeing how far Nevaeh climbed made me want to explore other names that jumped the most ranks in the shortest time. I calculated a metric for volatility, which is (best rank — first rank) / (best year — first year). I also limited results to names whose best rank cracked the top 500, since climbing ranks is much easier for obscure names.

Kanye and Rihanna demonstrates the power of celebrity on name popularity, although it’s risky business tying your child’s name to an icon whose reputation might not age well.

The Speedrunners

These are the names that broke the Top 250 by gender, but appear in the least years total.

For the most part, these are newer names still gaining in popularity. It’s worth noting that the girls’ names skew much more recent than the boys’, suggesting girls move through trends much faster.

To broaden the results beyond the newest names, I filtered the same list to names that first appeared before 1996.

While the first group still has time to break through, it’s fair to say this second group probably won’t become mainstream any time soon.

The Peaked-in-High-Schoolers

These are names whose most popular year was also the first year it was recorded in the dataset. The top of this list is dominated by old standbys from 1880 (John, Mary, William, etc.), so I’ve limited this list to names appearing after 1900.

Both Levar and Kunta appear on the boys’ list thanks to the 1977 miniseries Roots and Levar Burton’s portrayal of Kunta Kinte.

Obviously the name Levar existed before 1977; Levar Burton was born on a US Army base in Germany in 1957, so he certainly received a social security number. But before 1977, fewer than 5 boys were named Levar each year and the name was below the SSA’s threshold for inclusion.

The Time Capsules

The Viral Sensations

Many of the names in the previous section spiked in popularity before dropping off, but rankings don’t give a complete picture of how unexpected a spike actually is.

Calculating the Z-Score (or standard score) for each name gives a clearer picture. The formula basically looks at how much a name’s popularity fluctuated year to year, then identifies the spikes that are way outside the norm. The score shows how many standard deviations the shift is, and thus how remarkable.

To give an idea of how anomalous these spikes are, check out the total number of babies named Mandy and how huge that first spike is compared to previous years.

These spikes often relate to pop culture events, like the 1974 release of the hit song Mandy. I’m planning a separate article diving into some of these cases and their causes.

The Generational Monoliths

What if a spike isn’t contained within a single year, but spread across an entire era? I calculated a rolling 20-year period for each name to see what percentage of total births happened within that window.

For the most timeless names (like James), no single 20-year slice contained more than a small share of total births. But when I sorted the results by the names with the highest concentration, I started to uncover the names that most belong to a particular generation.

Here are the top scores of the 50s and 60s.

These are the standouts from the 80s.

And these are the most concentrated results of all.

It makes sense that newer names would be more concentrated; they’ve had fewer years to accumulate births across different eras. Still, it might be helpful to know that all the Harpers will definitely be typecast by their name in another 50 years the way Brittanys and Debras are today.

The Comeback Kids

The Late Bloomers

These are the names that debuted above rank 1,000 and took the longest to crack the top 250.

Some of the girls’ names could be categorized as “Grandparent names” that are old-fashioned enough to feel fresh again. Taking it a step further, these names debuted above rank 1,000 and took the longest to break the top 25.

Liam and Riley both debuted below rank 3,700 and 4,900 respectively, making their eventual rise to the top 25 one of the most remarkable climbs in the data.

The Zombies

While slow is interesting, I also wanted to explore popular names that dipped before returning to prominence. I calculated a resurrection score by looking at each name’s average popularity from 1880–1920 and 2020–2024, then looking at its worst ranking from 1960–1980.

I filtered for names with an early average under 250, then subtracted the modern average from its trough. The score measures the distance between a name’s lowest point and its modern peak. These resurrected names all survived a period of social exile to become hits again.

Levi and Noah didn’t just resurface, they’re back with a vengeance near the top of the boys’ overall rankings. The girls’ names share a vintage feel and continue the grandparent trend.

The Vanishing Acts

The Burnouts

The higher they fly, the harder they fall.

I tweaked my approach to volatility to find the names that fell the hardest in the shortest period. By calculating (worst rank — best rank) / (worst year — best year) and filtering for names whose worst year came after the best one, I found the steepest crashes for names that ever cracked the top 250.

Shaquille rocketed into popularity as Shaq came on the scene, but crashed just as hard as he approached retirement.

The rest of the boys’ names aged into TV dad territory.

Ratcheting up the tragedy, I filtered for the gnarliest crashes from names that ever reached the top 25.

These names feel genuinely old, and it’s striking that the boys’ list reads like a roster of former politicians.

Finally, I looked at crashes among names that reached the top 5.

The boys’ side is relatively tame, although the girls have seen some major crashes. More proof that girls’ names are more sensitive to shifting trends than boys’.

The Dodo Birds

While some of those crashes are brutal, many of the names are still in use today. I wanted to find names that were effectively dead, although the SSA threshold means up to 4 babies could still be named them each year. These are the names that cracked the top 250 but have been gone the longest.

I also sorted by lowest best rank to find the most popular name to have gone extinct. Notice the top result on the girls’ side! One is Myrtie while the other is Myrtle. It took me longer than I’m proud of to realize that…

The girls’ names mostly just faded into obscurity, but it’s much easier to explain the boys’ side of things. Edd and Claud were overtaken by their more conventional spellings, while Dick is likely a casualty of modern playground humor. Garfield and Adolph demonstrate what happens when a public figure (real or animated) rises to prominence and people suddenly don’t want to be associated.

The Final Tally

After all that work, I’m left with 228 names, 28 tables, and 292 entries. To finish things off, I tallied how many times each name appeared across all 28 tables.

The top of the list begins where this post did: with the most popular all-time names. The top seven are old-school classics, while the bottom eight are dominated by newer, trendier names. Nevaeh remains the standout overachiever of the entire dataset and one of the most impressive naming trends I’ve come across. Perhaps most surprising, some of today’s most popular names (Noah, Emma, Olivia) barely appeared at all, which suggests these metrics capture something that raw popularity counts miss entirely.