Truly Unisex? What the Data Says

A one-year jump can be a fluke. A ten-year climb is a fact. So we measured the decade: every name that ha

Parents ask for "unisex" names as if the chart kept a list. It doesn't — but the data can answer the question precisely, if we're honest about what it measures. A name is recorded in a year when at least five babies receive it, and the records are kept separately for girls and boys. So a name counts as shared in 2025 only if at least five girls and at least five boys received it.

By that measure, sharing is rare. Of the 9,138 distinct names recorded in 2025, just 579 — 6.3% — appear on both the girls' and the boys' charts. The other 8,559 names, 93.7% of everything in use, were recorded for one gender only. (A name could still have been given to one, two or four babies of the other gender without the data showing it; below five, the records are silent.)

Within those 579 shared names, the split is almost never close. Here are the two ends of the spectrum.

The true coin flips: big names closest to 50/50

These are the most balanced names with real scale — at least 2,000 babies in total in 2025, ranked by how close the split comes to even.

Dakota is the closest thing American naming has to a coin flip: 1,011 girls against 1,059 boys, a 48.8/51.2 split across 2,070 babies — we devoted a whole piece to it, Dakota: The Most Gender-Balanced Name in America. Tatum matches its balance at a bigger scale (1,644 girls, 1,723 boys), and Charlie — whose slow-motion crossover we traced in Charlie: The 53/47 Name — remains genuinely contested, with the boys retaking the lead in 2025. Below the top few, "balanced" becomes generous: Riley, the biggest shared name of all at 6,078 babies, is nearly three-quarters girls.

The technicalities: names that chart for both, but barely

At the other end sit names whose minority gender is a rounding error. These are the most lopsided names that still chart for both genders — at least 1,000 babies in total, with one gender taking at least 95%.

Ninety-four names meet this description, and the traffic runs mostly one way: 73 lean at least 95% to boys, only 21 lean that far to girls. James is the extreme — 11,945 boys and 16 girls. The girls' side is led by Aria (6,130 girls, 8 boys), Harper (6,792 girls, 19 boys) and Addison (2,961 girls, 10 boys). In most of these cases the minority count is barely over the recording line at all — five girls named Leo, five named Luka. A handful of families is all it takes for a "boys' name" to technically chart for girls.

What this means if you're choosing

The honest answer to "is this name unisex?" is a number, not a yes. A name like Dakota or Tatum will read as genuinely open — your child will meet both Dakotas. A name at 95/5 will read as a boys' or girls' name with rare exceptions, whatever the chart technically says. And a name can move: Avery was majority-boy in 1990 and is 82% girls today (see Avery: How a Boys' Name Became a Girls' Name), while the surname wave in Emerson and the Surname Crossover Wave is crossing in both directions at once. Every name page on this site shows its own split — check yours before you decide how "unisex" it really is.

Our advice: if you want a name nobody will gender on sight, stay in the first table — a split between 40/60 and 60/40 with thousands of babies on both sides. Everything else is a gendered name with a footnote.

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