The Most Popular Name in America Since 1880

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 26, 7:30AM EST

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The Most Popular Name in America Since 1880 — © Neilson Barnard / Getty Images

People would be hard-pressed to know the most popular names people gave their children in 2021. The most popular boys’ names were Liam and Noah. Among the girls born last year, they were Olivia and Emma. What happened to Elizabeth and Bill?

Perhaps people want the names of their children to stand out. There are dozens of baby name books to help parents choose. One, with an extraordinary list, is “100,000+ Baby Names.” How many Americans can even name 1,000?

24/7 Tempo reviewed popular name data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) to identify the most common name in America since records began. We found that there is less variety among boys’ names. Since 1880, the SSA has tracked more than 67,000 different female and almost 41,000 different male names in the United States.

Many historically popular names, such as Elizabeth and John, have dropped in popularity in the past decade but remain in the top 20 of all time. Other names that were popular about a century ago have not made a revival.
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To identify the most popular names in America, 24/7 Tempo reviewed SSA name data for the years 1880 through 2019, the latest year for which data is available. SSA tracks every name with at least five occurrences. All names are from Social Security card applications for U.S. births after 1879. We calculated the share of each name for boys and girls born each year since. The popularity rank is based on the average frequency of each name over the period. The total number of babies given the name and the decade of their peak popularity also came from the SSA.

The most popular girl’s name is Mary. Here are the details:

Average share of babies named Mary: 3.38%
Total babies named Mary: 4,128,052
Most popular decade: 1920 (701,760 babies, or 5.87% of all girls)

Mary is the English form of Maria, which is the Latin name of the Greek Mariam and Maria, both of which are derived from the Hebrew Miriam. What the name means exactly is unclear: “sea of bitterness,” “rebelliousness” or “wished-for child.”

The most popular boy’s name is John. Here are the details:

Average share of babies named John: 4.01%
Total babies named John: 5,133,909
Most popular decade: 1880 (89,950 babies, or 8.21% of all boys)

John is derived from the Latin Johannes, which comes from the Greek Ioannes, which itself is derived from the Hebrew Yehanan, a short version of Yehohanan, meaning “Yahweh is gracious.”

Click here to see all the most popular names in America since 1880.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.