How many babies got a name, every year since 1880

Where every number comes from

All counts on this page are from one file: the US Social Security Administration's national baby-name data, names.zip at ssa.gov/oact/babynames/names.zip. It has one text file per year of birth, yob1880.txt to yob2025.txt, and each line is a name, a sex and a number of babies. The SSA says the file was tabulated from Social Security records as of March 1, 2026.

ssa.gov refuses requests from our build server, so the file was taken from the Internet Archive's copy of that exact address, captured 28 September 2026. Its SHA-256 is cd78e975ed7bb358e018dd62fbe14ced89295e9581c49172ca4eedcb011b3724; the capture address, the date and the row count for every year are kept with the site's source.

Why a year can say “under 5 or none”

To protect privacy the SSA lists a name for a sex in a year only when at least 5 babies got it. A year that is not in the file could be 4 babies or none, so it is shown as “under 5 or none”, never as 0, and the chart line breaks there instead of dropping to the floor. Totals add up only the years that are listed, so for rarer names the true total is a little higher.

Worked example. In 1880, 7,065 girls were named Mary. Mary peaked for girls in 1921 with 73,984. Liam has no year before 1947 with five or more boys, and in 2025 it was the number 1 boys' name with 20,818.

How ranks are worked out

Ranks follow the SSA's own rule: within one sex, names are ordered by the number of babies, ties in alphabetical order, and the first name is rank 1. Girls and boys are ranked separately, so a name can be number 1 for girls and several thousandth for boys in the same year. A decade rank uses the births summed over the ten years (the current decade so far only runs to the latest year in the file).

What the data does not tell you

• Spellings are separate names. Aiden, Aidan and Ayden are three rows; add them yourself if you want the sound rather than the spelling.
• Only letters A–Z. SSA names are 2 to 15 letters with no spaces, hyphens or accents, so “Mary-Jane” is looked up as Maryjane.
• People with a Social Security number. The file covers US births where the person has a number, so the early decades count people who applied for one later in life, not every baby born then.
• First names only, national totals. No middle names, no surnames, no states on this page.
• A peak is by share, not by count or fame. Mary's largest share of counted girls was in 1880 (7,065 of 90,994, 77.6 per 1,000), though its most babies came in 1921 (73,984 of 1,233,058, 60.0 per 1,000), so “Names of a year” lists it under 1880.
• One name at a time. To put two to four names on one chart and find the year one passed another, use compare names.