Girls Get More Names Than Boys — and They Always Have

"Always" is a word data rarely lets you use. Here it does.

Count the distinct names given in any year of our records — every name that at least five babies received — and the girls' list is longer than the boys'. In 1910: 1,083 girls' names vs 692 boys' names. In 1950: 2,118 vs 1,727. In 2025: 5,349 vs 4,368.

We checked all 116 years, 1910 through 2025. There is not one exception. Not during the wars, not during the Baby Boom, not in the most traditional decade you can name. Parents have always, always experimented more with daughters' names.

The gap, decade by decade

Two moments stand out. The closest the boys ever came was 1928, when the gap shrank to just 38 names (1,985 girls' names vs 1,947 boys') — the one era when the two charts were nearly the same size. And the widest the gap ever blew open was 2008: 6,053 distinct girls' names — the all-time peak for either sex — against 4,422 boys' names, a gap of 1,631. (The boys' own peak came a year later, 4,500 names in 2009.)

Fewer babies, more names

The 2025 numbers sharpen the point. Fewer girls were born than boys — 1,303,470 girls vs 1,466,284 boys — yet those fewer girls were spread across almost a thousand more distinct names.

Do the division and the two charts are different sports: in 2025 there was roughly one distinct girls' name per 244 baby girls, but only one distinct boys' name per 336 baby boys. A daughter is simply more likely than a son to get a name almost nobody else in her class shares.

This is also why the girls' #1 is always a smaller prize than the boys' #1. The girls' chart splits its births across a wider field, so even its champion — Olivia, 13,544 babies — collects a thinner slice than Liam's 20,818. "Most popular girls' name" and "most popular boys' name" sound like equivalent titles. Arithmetically, they never have been.

Why daughters get the wider canvas

The data can't interview parents, but the shape of the gap tells a consistent story. Boys' names carry the inheritance load — the juniors, the grandfathers, the family surnames — and inheritance is a conservative force. The boys' chart is anchored by a small set of perennials (John never left the top 28 in 116 years) while the girls' chart reinvents itself every generation: the Mary era, the Jennifer era, the invented-name era all happened on the girls' side first.

Notice, too, when the gap exploded: after 1970. As formal naming rules loosened, it was daughters' names that absorbed the freedom — the spelling variants, the surname imports, the brand-new coinages. The boys' chart took the same decades off, comparatively speaking.

Our advice: if you're comparing a girls' name and a boys' name by rank, stop. A rank is a position in a field, and the fields are different sizes. Compare counts instead — how many babies actually got the name — and if you want true rarity, the girls' chart is where rarity lives at every rank.

See the fields for yourself: the most popular girl baby names 2025 and most popular boy baby names 2025 charts, and the century of change on baby names by decade.

See name recommendations based on your last name

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration · Data through 2025 · Updated 2026