Gender-neutral names in the data
Names shared by girls and boys are more common than ever. In the 1980s about 2% of American babies got a name that went at least one time in five to the other sex that year; in the 2020s so far it is 6.1%. SSA counts each sex separately, which lets the records show how shared a name really is.
How the records count a shared name
SSA’s files list a name once for girls and once for boys, each with its own count and rank. NameAlmanac puts the two together: its unisex list ranks the names given to at least 1,000 babies in 2025 with at least a fifth of them going to each sex, by how close their split is to half and half. In 2025, 381 names were given to at least 1,000 babies and to both sexes; 43 of them went at least a fifth to each, and the most evenly shared were Dakota (1,035 girls and 1,074 boys), Blake and Tatum. Spellings count separately, as in SSA’s file: Jordan and Jordyn are two names with different splits.
Splits: the 2025 SSA national file, girls and boys counted separately. The full unisex list.
A share that has tripled
Measured as the share of all babies whose name went to the other sex at least 20% of the time in their birth year, shared names held near 2% for most of the 20th century: 2.2% in the 1900s, 2.7% in the 1920s, 1.9% in the 1940s, 2.2% in the 1960s and 2.0% in the 1980s. The share then rose to 4.2% in the 2000s and 6.1% in the 2020s so far.
Shares by decade: births under names whose minority sex was at least 20% of that year’s births of the name, SSA national file.
Names that changed sides
Most names that were once shared have ended up with one sex, and far more often girls than boys. Ashley was a boys’ name until girls outnumbered boys in 1964; it has been given to 875,722 Americans. Kelly switched in 1957, Lauren in 1945, Leslie in 1946 and Taylor, for the last time, in 1990. Some have gone back: Alexis went back to a boys’ majority in 2024 after decades as a girls’ name. The unisex page lists the names that changed sides and when.
Changes of side: the majority sex year by year, among years with 100 or more births of the name, SSA national file 1880-2025.
What the numbers do not say
SSA records the sex marked on the card application, so these figures describe how names were given at birth, not how people identify later. A name can also be shared across groups without being mixed within them: some names are given to girls in one region or community and boys in another. Each name’s record on NameAlmanac shows its split year by year and the states where it is most common, which is where that kind of difference shows.