The Biggest Fallers: Baby Names Cooling Off Fast Since 2020

Nov 6, 2026 Abigail Adams, Editorial writer

Every year we publish the fastest-rising baby names, and every year the same names get the headlines. This is the other list — the one nobody puts on a nursery wall.

We took every name that ranked in the top 120 in 2020 and measured how far it fell by 2025. The pattern is brutal: every name below lost at least two-fifths of its babies in five years. These aren't names that were never popular. They are names that were everywhere — and then, quickly, weren't.

The fallers

Kaylee — #117 → #254 (2,318 babies → 1,191). The single biggest drop of any top-120 name: 137 places.
Reagan — #113 → #246 (2,367 → 1,227). Down 133 places.
Brayden — #111 → #229 (3,287 → 1,525). The -ayden era, ending in one name.
Mackenzie — #119 → #232 (2,285 → 1,306).
Skylar — #64 → #168 (3,638 → 1,794). From the top 65 to outside the top 165, and her baby count almost exactly halved.
Peyton — #97 → #198 (2,721 → 1,543). Out of the top 100, then out of the top 190.
Everleigh — #94 → #193 (2,822 → 1,603). The -leigh wave crested fast.
Aubrey — #56 → #146 (3,921 → 1,987). She was a top-60 name in 2020. Half her babies are gone.
Connor — #78 → #166 (4,414 → 2,206). His count halved to the baby: 4,414 down to 2,206.
Kingston — #117 → #204 (3,176 → 1,715).
Nevaeh — #83 → #166 (3,122 → 1,806). "Heaven" spelled backwards has been sliding for years; the slide is now a fall.
Bella — #63 → #136 (3,642 → 2,116). The Twilight generation's favorite is a faller on two lists at once — she is also one of the biggest fallers of the decade in our pop-culture file.

What the fallers have in common

Look at the shapes. Almost none of these names had a long, gentle history before their peak. They rose quickly on a sound — the -ayden boom, the -leigh spellings, the surname-as-first-name wave — and sounds date faster than names do. When the fashion moved, there was no century of tradition underneath to slow the fall.

Compare them with a name like Aubrey's near-neighbor Audrey, or with the classics in our vintage file: names with deep roots tend to sink slowly, over decades. Names that arrive as a style leave as one.

There's a second lesson in the counts. A fall of 100 places at the top of the chart is not the same as a fall of 100 places further down — but here it's the counts that tell the story: Skylar, Aubrey and Connor each lost roughly half their babies. Rank is vanity; the delivery-ward number is the reality.

Should a falling name scare you?

Not automatically. A name at #200 with 1,500 babies a year is still a well-known, well-liked name — your child will not be explaining it. What a fall like this does predict is feel: a name that halves in five years tends to keep sliding, and it stamps a child with a birth era. A Skylar or an Everleigh will read "born around 2020" the way a Jennifer reads "born around 1975."

Our advice: If a name you love is on this list, the question isn't "is it still usable?" — it plainly is. The question is whether you're choosing the name or the moment. If you'd love it at #400 as much as at #90, choose it with confidence. If what you loved was that it felt current, know that current is exactly what it no longer is.

See the curves yourself: Skylar, Aubrey, Brayden — and compare them with the most popular girls' names of 2025.