Baby names of 1971

Jennifer and Michael topped the lists in 1971, out of 3,432,270 births recorded across 13,842 different names. That is 4.8% fewer than the 1970 files hold. About 3.1 million of them are alive today.

← 1970 All years 1972 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Jennifer	56,771
2	Michelle	33,160
3	Lisa	32,907
4	Kimberly	30,708
5	Amy	26,237
6	Angela	25,901
7	Melissa	23,875
8	Tammy	17,656
9	Mary	16,703
10	Julie	15,322
11	Stephanie	15,135
12	Heather	15,017
13	Tracy	14,330
14	Dawn	14,288
15	Karen	14,214
16	Laura	13,875
17	Susan	13,782
18	Christine	13,678
19	Elizabeth	13,606
20	Tina	13,266
21	Shannon	12,647
22	Kelly	12,599
23	Rebecca	12,192
24	Cynthia	12,143
25	Lori	11,829

All 200 girls’ names of 1971 (9,645 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Michael	77,577
2	James	54,597
3	David	53,113
4	John	51,512
5	Robert	50,634
6	Christopher	48,225
7	William	35,413
8	Jason	34,173
9	Brian	32,624
10	Scott	30,901
11	Richard	26,154
12	Jeffrey	25,834
13	Mark	25,132
14	Kevin	24,850
15	Joseph	24,517
16	Steven	23,686
17	Thomas	23,149
18	Eric	22,962
19	Matthew	22,543
20	Daniel	21,785
21	Timothy	20,089
22	Charles	19,851
23	Anthony	19,223
24	Paul	17,469
25	Kenneth	14,763

All 200 boys’ names of 1971 (5,655 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1970:

Yesenia #2,522 → #407 +2,115
Shayla #2,267 → #836 +1,431
Ebony #1,681 → #828 +853
Consuela #1,706 → #957 +749
Candida #1,196 → #686 +510
Brittany #1,369 → #889 +480
Tanisha #974 → #506 +468
Latoya #1,354 → #906 +448

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1970:

Germaine #1,582 → #828 +754
Jeramie #1,546 → #920 +626
Jeremey #1,396 → #884 +512
Jarod #1,337 → #864 +473
Jamel #1,374 → #920 +454
Lashawn #1,435 → #998 +437
Jermaine #621 → #233 +388
Audie #1,297 → #941 +356

Germaine and Lashawn are here because the boys’ file records them: the SSA publishes every name given to five or more babies of one sex, and a rank is a position within that list. It is not a claim about whose name it is.

First recorded in 1971, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1971:

Ayanna 194
Jesenia 43
Bree 30
Jurea 29
Nkenge 25
Tango 24
Yessenia 22
Tonika 22
Veleka 21
Molina 21

First recorded in 1971, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1971:

Diallo 54
Khari 32
Kobie 26
Shaft 22
Damani 18
Jarmaine 16
Oronde 16
Sundiata 16
Deacon 15
Amiri 14

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration national baby-name files. Names given to fewer than five babies in a year are not published, so the totals here run below the true number of births. How far below is not the same in every year: the files hold 201,484 births for 1880 and 3,315,343 for 2025, so a change from one year to the next in the early decades is partly a change in what the record covers.