Look up any first name or surname
105,966 first names, 1880 to 2025, and 156,621 surnames from the 2020 census.
Surnames
156,621 surnames from the 2020 census, with how many people bear each one and how it is distributed.
Browse by year
The most popular names of every year from 1880 to 2025, with the biggest climbers and the names that appeared for the first time.
Read here this week
The pages other people have been looking at over the last seven days. Not the most popular names in America — that is the list below, and it comes from the records rather than from this site.
Counted without cookies and without recording anything about who asked. How that works.
The most given names on record
- James
- John
- Robert
- Michael
- William
- Mary
- David
- Joseph
- Richard
- Charles
- Thomas
- Christopher
- Daniel
- Elizabeth
- Matthew
- Patricia
- George
- Anthony
- Jennifer
- Linda
- Barbara
- Donald
- Paul
- Mark
- Andrew
- Edward
- Steven
- Kenneth
- Margaret
- Joshua
- Kevin
- Brian
- Susan
- Dorothy
- Sarah
- Timothy
- Ronald
- Jason
- Jessica
- Helen
- all given names →
Work something out about yourself
- Which of two names is more popular? Two names on one chart, and the year one overtook the other.
- Which names changed sex, and when? Ashley was a boy’s name until 1964, and hundreds of names crossed over.
- Where did your name rank the year you were born? Every name the SSA recorded, ranked year by year.
- How many Americans share your whole name? First name and surname together, which is a much smaller number.
- How many people share your birthday? Everyone alive who was born on your exact date.
- How old are you, compared to everyone else? Your place in the queue among living Americans.
Sources: US Social Security Administration baby-name files and the US Census Bureau's 2020 surname file, both public domain.