How rare is your first name?

For the United States, the data comes from the Social Security Administration (SSA), which publishes every first name given to 5 or more babies per year since 1880. For the United Kingdom, the data comes from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for England and Wales, and the National Records of Scotland. These datasets are based on birth registrations and are considered gold-standard government sources.

Name popularity follows a predictable lifecycle. A name starts rare, rises over 10 to 20 years as early adopters choose it, peaks when it enters mainstream awareness, and then declines as it begins to feel dated. Cultural triggers accelerate the cycle: celebrity babies, TV characters, and viral moments can spike a name dramatically. The decline phase is driven by generational avoidance: parents rarely choose names associated with their parents' generation.

Yes, dramatically. In the 1950s, the top 10 boys' names accounted for about 30% of all births. By the 2020s, that figure had dropped to roughly 7%. This means that a "popular" name today is actually less common than a merely average name 70 years ago. The internet and globalisation have expanded the pool of available names, and cultural shifts toward individuality have pushed parents away from traditional naming conventions.

The SSA dataset only includes names given to 5 or more babies per year. If your name was given to 4 or fewer babies in your birth year, it will not appear in the data. This threshold exists to protect privacy. Very unusual names, creative spellings, and names from small immigrant communities are most likely to fall below this threshold. If your name does not appear, it means it was genuinely very rare in your birth year.

Rapid spikes are almost always triggered by cultural events: a hit TV show, a celebrity baby announcement, a viral moment. The name Khaleesi went from non-existent to the top 1,000 after Game of Thrones premiered. The crash that follows is equally cultural: once a name becomes associated with a trend or era, it starts to feel dated. The faster a name rises, the faster it typically falls.

Yes. Girls' names cycle faster and more dramatically than boys' names. Parents are more willing to experiment with novel girls' names, and girls' names fall out of favour more quickly once they peak. Boys' names tend to be more conservative, with classics like James, William, and John maintaining presence across many decades. When a traditionally male name begins to be used for girls, it almost always declines for boys within a generation, but the reverse rarely happens.

Absolutely. The SSA and ONS treat each spelling as a separate name. Aiden, Aidan, Ayden, Aydin, and Aden are all counted independently. If you add up all variant spellings, many modern names are more common than their individual entries suggest. When this calculator reports your name's rarity, it uses the exact spelling you enter.

A few names have remained in consistent use for centuries without ever becoming trendy or dated. In English-speaking countries, Elizabeth, Mary, John, and James have been in the top 100 for over 200 years. However, even these stalwarts have declined in relative popularity: John was given to 4 to 5% of all boys in the early 1900s but under 0.5% today. They endure by cycling between classic and old-fashioned without ever fully disappearing.

The SSA data provides a clear picture of name trajectory over time. A name is declining if its rank has dropped significantly over the past 10 to 20 years, for example a name that was in the top 50 in 2005 but is now outside the top 200 is declining. Names that are rising are those climbing from low ranks to high ranks, driven by cultural or celebrity influence. The most reliable signal of a name going "out of fashion" is a combination of: peak popularity concentrated in a specific 10 to 20 year window (suggesting a generational cohort association), absence of strong fictional or cultural anchors keeping it in circulation, and a demographic profile where the name is now most common among older adults rather than children. Names strongly associated with a specific generation (Karen, Linda, Gary, Deborah) are in long decline. Names that have successfully recurred across multiple generations (Elizabeth, James, Charlotte, Henry) tend to be more stable. This calculator shows the full popularity timeline for any name in the SSA database.

As of the most recent SSA data (2023), Liam and Olivia were the most popular baby names in the United States for male and female babies respectively. Liam has held the top male position for seven consecutive years (2017 to 2023). Olivia has been the top female name for five years (2019 to 2023). The top five male names in 2023 were Liam, Noah, Oliver, James, and Elijah. The top five female names were Olivia, Emma, Charlotte, Amelia, and Sophia. The names at the very top of current popularity tend to be names with literary or historical associations that feel classic without being dated: names like Oliver, Henry, Eleanor, and Charlotte reflect this pattern. The era of hyperconcentrated popularity (when a single name could account for 5%+ of all babies) has passed: even the most popular current names account for less than 1% of all babies, reflecting the much wider diversity of names now in use.

The SSA publishes its full baby name dataset by year at ssa.gov/oact/babynames, which is the data this calculator uses. You can search any name and see its rank and count for any year from 1880 onward. To find your name's popularity at birth, simply enter your name and birth year: this calculator shows your exact rank and the percentage of babies given your name that year, as well as how that compares to the full distribution. The SSA data includes all names given to at least 5 babies in a given year, so if your name appears at all, you can see its precise frequency. If your name was given to fewer than 5 babies in your birth year (or does not appear in the database at all), this calculator will indicate that your name is extremely rare for your cohort, placing you in approximately the rarest 1 to 3% of names by birth year frequency. For UK users, the ONS publishes equivalent data for England and Wales at ons.gov.uk.