What's in a name? SSA lists newborn favorites in 2025
Mary and Michael top SSA rankings over the past century.
For all you newborn boys and girls in 2025 named Liam or Olivia, you are not alone.
Once again, they top the list of most-popular baby names picked by parents last year, according to the Social Security Administration.
In order of ranking for boys, Liam was followed in second place by Noah, then Oliver, Theodore, Henry, James, Elijah, Mateo, William and Lucas.
Listed in popularity order behind Olivia were Charlotte, Emma, Amelia, Sophia, Mia, Isabella, Evelyn, Sofia, and Eliana.
Olivia and Emma and Liam and Noah have been trending No. 1 and 2 since 2014. Before that, Emily and Jacob and Jessica and Michael had strong runs for two decades.
In addition to ranking the most popular names, Social Security also lists names which have changed the most in popularity from one year to the next. Generally, the more popular a name, the smaller the change.
The 10 baby names which made the biggest increases in popularity from 2024 to 2025 were:
√ Boys — Kasai, Akari, Eziah, Jasai, Neithan, Kael, Landry, Haziel, Syaire, and Brewer;
√ Girls — Klarity, Rynlee, Ailanny, Naylani, Madisson, Liora, Merritt, Jaslyn, Kyomi, and Alara.
Meanwhile, the names which saw the biggest drops in popularity rankings from 2024 to 2025 were:
√ Boys — Karim , Khaza, Khai, Landen, Seven, Nixon, Castiel, Zen, Dangelom, and Zaylen;
√ Girls — Aubrie, Cattleya, Jaycee, Zendaya, Novalee, Allyson, Alexa, Dayana, Addilyn, and Natasha.
Over the last 100 years, the boy name Michael has held the top spot most often (44 times), while the girl name Mary has been ranked number one 30 times between 1926 and 2025.
Social Security also charts the top names in each state and U.S. terrorities. For Washington state in 2024, Oliver edged Liam, 448 to 444, for most popular among the boys. Among girls, Olivia outpaced Charlotte, 354 to 284.
The tallies are solely based on Social Security card applications. The administration noted that many people born before 1937 never applied for a Social Security card, so their names are not included in the data.
The administration does not combine different spellings of similar names — for example, Caitlin, Caitlyn, Kaitlin, Kaitlyn, Kaitlynn, Katelyn, and Katelynn each have a different rank. But it does remove hyphens and spaces in first names, so Julie-Anne, Julie Anne, and Julieanne are all counted as a single entry.
