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By 1999, when Jacob and Emily ruled, those shares had shrunk to 13.3 percent for baby boys and 9.8 percent for baby girls. In 2024, the top 10 baby names accounted for just 7.4 percent of

boys and 6.5 percent of girls. (Incidentally, Michael now ranks 18th for boys and Jacob 41st. Emily remains a relatively popular girl’s name, at number 25, but the once-ubiquitous Jennifer

has fallen to 547th.) “Parents used to take for granted that they would choose from an established set of ‘normal’ names, and parenting guides warned about the dangers of choosing anything

too unconventional,” Wattenberg says. “That started to change in the 1960s, as parents felt freer to use names that reflected their values and identity. Then, in the 1990s, with the

fracturing of mass media and the rise of the internet, everything broke wide open.” WELCOME, TRUCE Along with tallying the overall top baby names every year, the SSA also spotlights those

that increased in popularity the most. The biggest jump for girls was Ailany, from a Hawaiian word meaning “chief” or “leader,” which made it into the public list at number 855 in 2023 and

moved up to the 101st spot in 2024. The similar-sounding Aylani and Analeia were also among the five fastest-growing girls’ names. The fastest-rising boy’s name, Truce, scraped into the top

1,000 at number 991 — a remarkable leap, considering it wasn’t even among the top 12,000 male names in 2023. (The SSA’s public database includes only the top 1,000 baby boy and girl names —

showing more would slow the agency’s servers — but researchers can go deeper by request.) “For generations, boys’ names remained more classic and conservative than girls’. That has changed,

and parents are increasingly pushing the style envelope with boys’ names,” Wattenberg says. Popular culture has long been a factor, too, with hit songs, movies and TV shows spawning boomlets

for names like Rocky (as in Balboa) in the late 1970s and Britney (as in Spears) in the early 2000s. One current trend that Wattenberg notes: “Just as TV is seeing a surge of neo-Western

series, parents are turning to more neo-Western names like Beau and Colter.” Beau has climbed steadily, from the lower 200s a decade ago to number 69 last year, while Colter leaped from

997th in 2019 to 218th in 2024. You can dive deeper into the data at the SSA’s baby names website.