Special Report

America's Fastest-Growing First Names

Nearly 3.8 million babies were born in the United States in 2018. Many of these babies were given names that are currently and have been historically popular, like Emma, William, and James. Others were given names that have more recently come into fashion. The use of these names has increased substantially over the past few years.

Some of the names that are rising in popularity the most were given to fewer than a couple thousand babies just five years ago. These include names for girls such as Adeline and Emilia and names for boys such as Luca and Kai. As of 2018, these names have nearly — and in some cases more than — doubled in usage.

24/7 Tempo reviewed data from the Social Security Administration to determine which boy and girl names are on the rise in popularity. It’s important to note that we only looked at the 200 most popular boy and girl names in 2018 and then reviewed the change in popularity of all of those names from 2013 through 2018.

The influence of celebrities on our culture cannot be overstated — for better or worse — and this includes naming trends. Some of the fastest-growing names have been selected by celebrities for their children in the last few years.

For example, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith named their daughter Willow, as did Carey Hart and Pink. The name is the 160th most popular baby name as of 2018 with more than 3,800 baby girls receiving it, up from around 2,000 in 2013. Regarding boys’ names, Luca — the name of Hilary Duff’s 7-year-old son — has increased from around 1,900 uses in 2013 to nearly 3,600 in 2018, making it the 178th most popular baby name.

Using the same name as someone else is common, and sometimes celebrities even find that their names have been used by famous people before them. These are famous people who have the same names.

Of course, as some names increase in popularity, others are declining. These are the names that are going extinct.

Click here to see America’s fastest growing first names for girls.
Click here to see America’s fastest growing first names for boys.

To identify America’s fastest growing first names, 24/7 Tempo reviewed the change in popularity of all boy and girl names from 2013 and 2018. We compared names by calculating the compound annual growth rate for each name. These names have the largest upward growth in popularity ranking. We only considered names in the top 200 most popular names in 2018. All data was obtained from the Social Security Administration, which publishes data for names with five or more occurrences. We did not account for similar spellings of same-sounding names. To be considered, a name’s popularity ranking needed to have increased by at least 20 places from 2013 and 2018.

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