U.S. Baby Naming Trends

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Trends in U.S. Baby Names

Every year around Mother's Day the US Social Security Administration reports on the most popular baby names for the previous year.

Based on more than 4.2 million Social Security card applications for children born last year, mothers and fathers have picked Emily and Jacob as the most popular baby names for the eighth year in a row.

What's interesting about these reports is that you can find the ranking of the names for a given year, but what is also interesting is the absolute popularity of the different names.

For instance, Michael was the second most popular boy's name in 2006, and was the most popular name for decades from the 1950's to the 1990's.  That ranking masks, however, the fact that the actual number of new babies named Michael has decreased from 65,246 in 1990 to 23,324 in 2006.  This is indicative of an overall trend of parents getting more diverse with their name choices, perhaps in search of more uniqueness.

On the girls side, Emily, while maintaining its position as the most popular girl's name has decreased from 26,524 babies in 1999 to 21,118 in 2006.

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Uncommon and Unique Baby Names 

The list of 1000 Popular Baby Names compiled by the Social Security Administration accounts for 75% of the babies named in the United States in any given year.

If you're looking for an uncommon or unique name (but not too uncommon) it's interesting to explore names toward the bottom of the list and names that fall in and out of the top 1000.


For instance the boy's name Brogan entered the list of the top 1000 in 2006 for the first time since before 1990.




On the distaff side, Janice, a name you might think would be more popular, dropped out of the top 1000 girls names in 2005 after over 15 years on the list. It reappeared in 2006, but was the choice for only 257 babies.

What's In A Name 

Popular Names & Their Celebrity Status

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Popular Baby Names 

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by slamja

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Welcome to my lens on U.S. Baby Naming trends.

I hope to keep it up-to-date and welcome any comments or suggestions on how to improve the lens and...

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