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For the seventh consecutive year, Liam and Olivia are the most popular names for newborn American boys and girls, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced on May 8.
In fact, 2025 marked the ninth straight year at the top for Liam, an Irish derivation of William. Olivia, based on the Latin word for “olive tree,” joined Liam at the top in 2019, ending a five-year run for Emma.
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Noah remains in second place for boys’ names, while Charlotte snagged the No. 2 slot for girls’ names, with Emma sliding to third place.
Rounding out the top five in 2025 were Oliver, Theodore and Henry for boys and Amelia and Sophia for girls.
“Looking at the top 10, people will either yawn or feel comforted by the familiarity,” says Laura Wattenberg, a names researcher and author of The Baby Name Wizard.
“We like our names to be very light and very smooth, so Liam and Noah really exemplify that,” Wattenberg says, while longer names with more consonants, such as Mildred and Gertrude, are out of favor.
“Today’s girls’ names are more flowing and lyrical,” she says, pointing to the rise of Eliana, which jumped from No. 18 to No. 10 and was the only new entry on either top 10, bumping Ava off the girls’ list.
What explains the staying power of names like Liam and Olivia?
“Cultural momentum” plays a part, says Michelle Napierski-Prancl, a professor of sociology at Russell Sage College in Troy, New York, who has studied the influence of popular music on baby names.
In her research, she says, “parents also talked a lot about wanting to be unique but not too unique.”
That may explain why some names pop up several times, just with different spellings, like Sophia and Sofia, both of which made the girls’ top 10. It’s a way for parents to differentiate their child’s name without tripping up the teacher taking attendance, Napierski-Prancl says.
Names going back to 1880
The SSA’s list of most popular baby names, issued annually ahead of Mother’s Day, is drawn from applications for Social Security numbers for newborn children, of which the agency recorded about 3.6 million in 2025.
Social Security’s baby-names database has data stretching back to 1880, when the most popular names were John and Mary (as they would remain well into the 20th century). It’s become a key resource for tracking cultural change, reflecting not just the most popular names of today but also how dramatically the pool of parents’ choices has deepened.
For example, 50 years ago, when Jennifer and Michael were in the middle of long runs as America’s most popular names, the 10 most common monikers were collectively bestowed upon 25.6 percent of baby boys and 16.5 percent of baby girls. In 2025, the top 10 accounted for just 7.4 percent of boys and 6.4 percent of girls.
“Looking at the numbers, the real story this year is that the top [10] is less relevant,” says Wattenberg. Further down the list, she says, “it’s wildly creative.”
Now trending: fire and light
Along with tallying the overall top baby names every year, the SSA spotlights those that increased in popularity the most.
Among the fastest rising boys’ names on the SSA list, for example, is Kasai, which means “fire” in Japanese and Swahili. It jumped 1,108 spots to make it into 2025’s top 1,000. Other newly popular boys’ names include Akari, which also has Japanese roots and means “light” or “brightness.”
That theme carries over to the girls’ side, with Klarity, a twist on the word “clarity,” ranking among the fastest-rising names. Other newly popular girls’ names include Rynlee and Ailanny, the latter of which has multiple spellings and would likely rank higher if the variations were combined.
Meanwhile, Michael now ranks 21st for boys, and the once-ubiquitous Jennifer has fallen to 586th among newborn girls.
TV shows, hit songs influence name trends
Popular culture has been a driving dynamic in recent decades, with hit songs, movies and TV shows spawning boomlets for names like Rocky (as in Balboa) in the late 1970s and Britney (as in Spears) in the early 2000s.
Napierski-Prancl has seen this phenomenon in her academic work.
“Names like Aidan grew in popularity from moms watching Sex and the City,” Napierski-Prancl says, referring to John Corbett’s character in that HBO hit. One mother who named her daughter Olivia told the researcher that she “grew up roller skating and singing Olivia Newton John songs, and then she watched a lot of SVU with Olivia Benson.”
That’s a big shift from the early days of the baby boom, when parents, like their parents before them, typically opted for names that carried religious, familial or ethnic significance, Napierski-Prancl says.
“It looks like parents are moving the family honor to the middle name,” she says.
You can dive deeper into the data at the SSA’s baby names website.
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