Half of US Babies Share These Names, 1880–2025
Topic: Population & Society
In this chart: Second Layer
About this chart
Each year's block stands for half of the babies born in the United States. It is filled by the fewest names that add up to half of them, one tile per name, sized by its babies, largest first. When a few names dominate, the block holds a few big tiles; as parents spread out over more names, it breaks into hundreds of small ones. Violet tiles are names given mostly to girls, teal mostly to boys, gold to both. A tile too small to hold its name is marked with two stars; hover over any tile, or tap it, to see its name, its babies and its share. Between years the tiles glide to their new places: a name that climbs slides forward, a name that joins the half grows in, and one that leaves shrinks away. The bars beneath count the names needed each year. The animation runs the record over sixty seconds, holds on the last year for three seconds, and loops. The scrubber under the chart marks each year and pauses on any of them.
Method
Each year from 1880 to 2025, the chart finds the fewest first names that together cover half of the babies born, and draws them as tiles in a block that stands for half of all babies: each tile is one name, sized by how many babies got it, largest first, in rows from the top left. The counts are the Social Security Administration's national baby-name data, from applications for Social Security cards. To protect privacy, the data lists only names given to at least five babies of one sex in a year; babies with rarer names are not counted, so "half" means half of the babies the data lists. Before 1937 few people applied for a card at birth, so the early years count the people born then who applied later; the early totals are small, but the chart shows shares. A name given to both girls and boys is counted once; its tile is violet when at least 80% of its babies are girls, teal when at least 80% are boys, and gold otherwise. The counts for girls and boys beside the chart are found the same way for each sex alone. Names are spelled as the data spells them, so Sofia and Sophia are different names. The counts are revised slightly each year; these are as published when the page was built.
Data sources
Data table
Every name among the fewest that cover half of the babies born in the United States, each year from 1880 to 2025, with its babies, its share of all the babies listed that year and the share of its babies who were girls, from the Social Security Administration's national baby-name data. Names merged across girls and boys and ranked by DataSlapper. These are the tiles the chart draws.
Show all 18,017 rows
The table could not be loaded here. Every row is in the CSV above.
| Year | Rank | Name | Babies | Share | Girls | Color |
|---|
Updated 2025
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<iframe src="https://dataslapper.com/viz/half-of-us-babies-share-these-names.html" width="960" height="600" style="border:0;max-width:100%" title="Half of US Babies Share These Names, 1880–2025" loading="lazy"></iframe>Paste this on any page. The visualization is self-contained and loads from dataslapper.com.