Most popular baby names of 2025: what changed

Where these numbers come from

Every number on this page is computed from the Social Security Administration's national baby-names file, which lists every name given to at least five babies of one sex in a year, from 1880 to 2025. ¹ The counts come from applications for Social Security cards, which nearly every US-born child now gets as a baby, so for recent years they are close to a full count of births. SSA leaves out names given to fewer than five babies of a sex to protect privacy. ²

Ranks follow SSA's own order: the most babies first, and names with the same count listed alphabetically. We imported the file, checked it against its published checksum and recomputed every rank; you can download any name's full history as a CSV from its page.

The 2025 top 10

For girls, the top 10 in 2025 were: Olivia (13,544), Charlotte (13,400), Emma (12,754), Amelia (12,699), Sophia (12,561), Mia (11,078), Isabella (10,666), Evelyn (9,123), Sofia (8,252) and Eliana (8,191). ¹

For boys: Liam (20,818), Noah (20,358), Oliver (14,939), Theodore (13,355), Henry (12,020), James (11,945), Elijah (11,111), Mateo (11,045), William (10,545) and Lucas (10,219). ¹

The gap at the very top is wider for boys. Liam and Noah are both above 20,000, while no girl's name reaches 14,000. That pattern is old: girls' names have been spread across more choices than boys' names for most of the record.

What moved in the girls' top 10

Charlotte had the strongest year near the top, rising from #4 to #2 with 13,400 girls, up from 12,597 in 2024. It finished just 144 babies behind Olivia. ¹

Emma and Amelia each slipped one place, to #3 and #4. Sophia and Mia swapped places (#5 and #6). Isabella and Evelyn held #7 and #8, and Sofia rose from #10 to #9. ¹

Eliana is the new name in the top 10, climbing from #18 to #10, from 6,447 girls to 8,191. Ava, #9 in 2024, fell to #11. ¹

Being #1 does not mean a name is growing. Olivia kept the top spot with about 1,200 fewer girls than in 2024 (14,772). Liam did the same for boys: 20,818 in 2025, down from 22,252. ¹ Part of that is simply fewer babies in the file: SSA recorded 3,315,343 babies in 2025, about 27,700 fewer than in 2024. ¹

What moved in the boys' top 10

The boys' list is the same ten names as 2024. Liam, Noah, Oliver and Theodore held #1 to #4. Henry and James swapped (#5 and #6), as did Elijah and Mateo (#7 and #8), and William and Lucas (#9 and #10). ¹

Theodore is the long-run story on the boys' side. It was #312 in 2000 and #259 in 2010, broke into the top 100 in 2015 at #99, reached #23 in 2020 and has been #4 for two years running. ¹

The biggest jumps of 2025

Among names in the 2025 top 1,000, the largest climbs are mostly lower in the list, where a few hundred more babies can move a name a thousand places. Klarity rose 1,396 places for girls, to #791. For boys, Kasai rose 1,108 places, to #639. ¹ Our rising names list shows the top 50 for each sex, with the births behind each jump.

Ailany is different because it happened near the top. SSA's file shows 311 girls named Ailany in 2023 (rank #857), then 2,606 in 2024 (#101) and 7,136 in 2025 (#14). ¹ That is a climb of more than 800 places into the top 20 in two years. The data shows that it happened, not why, so we won't guess at a reason.

Five girls' names and six boys' names were outside the top 100 in 2024 and inside it in 2025 (some, like Georgia and Arthur, are returning to a list they were on a century ago): Ailany (#14), Sienna (#94), Amara (#98), Georgia (#99) and Juniper (#100) for girls, and Atlas (#75), Adriel (#84), Arthur (#87), Emiliano (#94), Eithan (#97) and Archer (#98) for boys. ¹

Names are spreading out

The top names cover a smaller share of babies than they used to. In 2025 the ten most common girls' names were given to about 7.0% of the girls in SSA's file, and the top ten boys' names to about 8.0% of boys. In 2000 those shares were about 10.2% for girls and 13.4% for boys. ¹

The number of distinct names also stays high. In 2025, 17,297 different girls' names and 13,930 boys' names were given to at least five babies each. ¹ That is part of why trend lists can mislead: a name can "rise" a long way while still being given to only a few hundred children.

Many names are at their high point right now. Of the girls' names in the 2025 top 1,000, 203 were at their best rank ever (or tied it) in 2025, and so were 210 of the boys' names. ¹ Nora, for example, reached #20 in 2025, its highest rank since records began in 1880.

How to use this if you're choosing a name

• Look at the curve, not only the rank. A name at #50 that has climbed steadily for 20 years will feel different in a classroom than one that has been at #50 since the 1990s. Every name page shows births for every year since 1880.
• Check the count. "#300" sounds rare, but it can still mean more than a thousand babies a year. The count tells you how many classmates might share the name.
• Spellings split a name. Ailany, Ailani and Aylani are separate entries in SSA's file. If you're weighing how common a name will feel, add up the spellings you'd hear as the same name.
• Pick it together. Name Match shows both of you the same real data on every card and only reveals the names you both said yes to.

Explore the data

• Most popular names of 2025: top 100 for girls and boys
• Fastest-rising names of 2025 and fastest-falling
• Gender-neutral names, with the measured girl/boy split
• Explore names by popularity, era, length and syllables