Top Baby Names of the 2000s

What the Data Says About the 2000s

The Social Security Administration's 2000s national files cumulate 11,962,822 births across the top 50 boy and top 50 girl names for the decade. Jacob led the boys with 274,064 births, while Emily led the girls with 223,755 births. The top 50 boys of the 2000s collectively captured 7,186,222 births versus 4,776,600 for the top 50 girls — the typical SSA pattern in which a narrower set of boy names dominates a wider share of total registrations. Names occurring fewer than five times in a given year are suppressed by SSA for privacy, so these totals represent only the public-disclosure portion of the decade's actual naming distribution.

The 2000s occupied a specific cultural moment in U.S. naming history. Early-2000s and 2010s decades mark the rise of -aiden/-ayden boy-name clusters, vowel-heavy girl names ending in -a or -ia, and the beginning of the classic-name revival.

Decade totals on this page aggregate SSA national name-year records across all ten years of the 2000s. Because the SSA excludes names with fewer than five annual occurrences, the true number of unique names given during the 2000s is substantially higher than the top-50 lists shown here — particularly for rare and emerging names that never crossed the disclosure threshold. Each spelling is also tracked as a separate entry, so combined pools (e.g., Sophia + Sofia, Aiden + Ayden) would produce different rankings. This page is provided for informational and research purposes and does not constitute naming, legal, or genealogical advice.