So my brother and sister-in-law are parents of a boy. The statistician in me just couldn’t help but think “What are the most popular American names given OVER TIME?” Well, all I had to do was look at the Social Security Administration’s website to find out. I just had to glean the information off their website and compile the top 1000 names for all years that the SSA has kept records.

So here you go…

The source for this data is from the  SSA’s Web Site for Baby Names. I highly encourage you to go there and play with their database. You can search various variables and see what their constraints were for the development of the lists.

The cool thing about viewing the rankings of names over time is that one can see cultural and ethnic influences corresponding to significant periods of American history. For example, directly after an influx of German immigrants in the 1880s, German names begin to pop up as immigrant families settle. In the same manner, one can see Arabic, African, Hebrew, Irish, Polish, Italian, Spanish, etc. names gaining in popularity directly after large influxes of immigration settlements.

Want to get a heads up on what the most common names will be (or was) in high school? Just add about 14 or so years to the birth year and there you go!