These baby names have exploded in popularity since 1990

Alexandra Frost
·2 min read

Newsflash: Your baby’s sweet new name is probably not that new. Recently, WordFinder dug through Social Security Administration data to analyze names by year, generation, and region to determine the most popular baby names over recent decades. Here’s what they found.

The skyrocketing popularity of Amelia

This name started gaining traction in 1990, and has increased by 142,925% since then. If you are old enough to remember Amelia Bedelia, you get why. That big number just means there might be a whole gaggle of Amelias in your kid’s class. Similarly vibed names, Taylor and Katherine, have fallen in popularity by 99%, they report.

The most unique states

If you are in Hawaii, Wyoming or Vermont, you are more likely to use an “uncommon name,” the report showed. Similarly, Mississippi had the most fiction-inspired names.

The most popular baby names across generations

Sure, we can check out Nameberry’s predictions for this year, and they’ve done an excellent job tracking recent years. But, if you go way back, this study points to additional girls’ names beyond Amelia as consistently and exponentially growing in popularity across three decades, including:

  • Naomi

  • Sadie

  • Leilani

  • Audrey

  • Ariana

  • Eliza

  • Madison

  • Grace

  • Aubrey

For boys, the following names have been rising for those three decades:

  • Noah

  • Beau

  • Mason

  • Jack

  • Jeremiah

  • Isaiah

  • Arthur

  • Weston

  • Landon

  • Parker

The once-popular baby names declining across generations

Some names aren’t standing the test of time. Though naming a child is a deeply personal decision, some people choose to monitor trends to see which names will remain popular in future years. For those keeping an eye on declining names, the following data might be of interest. Here are the names that are seeing a multi-decade decrease in popularity:

  • Laura

  • Amy

  • Alexandra

  • Ashley

  • Brooke

  • Kylie

  • Rachel

  • Kiara

And for boys:

  • Blake

  • Patrick

  • Tyler

  • Manuel

  • Peter

  • Louis

  • Zachary

  • Nathaniel

  • Javier

  • Nicholas

Generations name differently

As anticipated, Gen Zers aren’t following Boomers’ or Millennials’ naming patterns. Boomers’ top names (for themselves, not for their kids) were Mary and Linda, James and Michael; Millennials’ top names were Jessica and Ashley, Michael and Christopher; Gen Z’s top names were Emily and Emma, Jacob and Michael. Michael is the only name across all the generations’ choices hanging out in the top two names across time.
To learn more about naming trends through the generations, check out your own region here.