Name Popularity Over Time

Chart any first name's births per year from 1880 to today, with its peak year, rank, and rise-and-fall story.

How it works

The chart draws straight from the Social Security Administration's national baby-name file, which lists how many newborns received each name every year from 1880 through the most recent release. Type a name, pick girls or boys (many names have separate histories for each), and you get its full curve: the slow build, the peak year marked with a dot, and whatever came after. The rank shown is the name's position in the latest year; the totals sum every recorded birth since the file begins.

Worked example: chart Jennifer for girls and you see a name that barely existed before the 1930s, catches fire in the late 1960s, and detonates in 1972 with more than 63,000 baby Jennifers in a single year, enough to make it the number-one girls' name for a remarkable fourteen-year run. Then the fall: by the 2010s, Jennifer had dropped out of the top 300. Every generation has names like this, and the shape of the curve is why a name “sounds” 35 or 60 years old to us. The name is a birth-year time stamp.

Two reading tips. First, the SSA only publishes a name-year when at least five babies got the name, so a line at zero really means “fewer than five.” Second, early decades undercount: Social Security began in the 1930s, and people born before then only appear if they eventually registered. The shapes are trustworthy; the absolute heights before about 1937 are floors.

FAQ

Why does a name show both a girls' and a boys' history?

The SSA records name and sex separately, so any name given to both appears twice with independent curves. Some names flipped over time: Leslie was mostly male in 1900 and is mostly female today, and the two-curve view is exactly how you can watch that crossover happen.

What was the biggest single name-year ever?

Linda in 1947, with over 99,000 girls, the sharpest one-year spike in the file. It was set off in part by the 1946 hit song “Linda,” and it briefly interrupted Mary's decades-long reign at number one. James in the same era holds the boys' record years, peaking above 94,000.

Why do modern number-one names have smaller peaks than old ones?

Naming has diversified. In 1950 the top-10 names covered roughly a quarter of all babies; today they cover well under a tenth. A name can be number one now with 15,000 births, a count that wouldn't have cracked the 1950s top-20, so compare ranks across eras, not raw counts.

Can I use this to check whether a name is getting popular?

Yes, and it's the honest way to vet a “rare” find. If the right end of the curve is bending sharply upward, the name is on its way, whatever its current rank. Names announced by celebrities or trending shows often triple within three years, and the curve shows it long before the top-100 list does.