How names rise and fall
Popular names follow a common shape. Among the 310 names given to more than 200,000 Americans whose peak year came before 2000, the typical name took 8 years to climb from half its peak to the peak, and 12 years to fall back to half. Fashion in names moves fast on the way up and a little slower on the way down.
The shape of a fashion
Take the names that defined a decade. Linda reached half its peak in 1946, peaked in 1947 and stayed above half only until 1955. Jennifer ran from 1969 to its peak in 1972 and fell under half after 1987. Jessica climbed from 1980 to 1987 and dropped under half after 1994, and Brittany went from 1986 to 1989 to 1994. Fast climbers also tend to fade sooner: names that climbed in 4 years or less took a median of 9.5 years to fall back to half their peak, against 14 years for names that climbed for 12 years or more. Jonah Berger and Gaël Le Mens found the same pattern in more than a century of U.S. and French name records (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009): names that were adopted faster were abandoned faster.
A few names break the pattern by lasting. Michael passed half its peak in 1947, peaked in 1957 and stayed above half until 1993, nearly half a century. Mary was the most given girls’ name every year from 1880 to 1961 except 1947 to 1952, when Linda led. These are names that stopped reading as fashionable and became simply common.
Peaks and half-peak years: births per year in the SSA national file, names with more than 200,000 recorded births and a peak before 2000, measured on the name’s main sex.
Why names spread and fade
The records cannot say why parents choose a name. The sociologist Stanley Lieberson argued, in A Matter of Taste (Yale University Press, 2000), that name fashions move mostly by their own momentum rather than by events: a name rises as parents hear it as fresh and falls once it is common enough to sound dated. What the records do show is the spread of naming. In 1950 the ten most given girls’ names went to 24.1% of girls; by 2025 they went to 7.0%, and SSA recorded 31,219 names that year. With more names in circulation, each fashion reaches fewer babies and turns over faster.
Top-10 shares and names recorded: How American naming spread out.
Names that come back
Some names return after decades away. Isabella left the girls’ top 1,000 after 1948 and re-entered in 1990; Hudson left after 1919 and returned in 1995. The trends page lists every name that came back to the top 1,000 after at least 30 years out, with the years it left and returned.
Comebacks: years in and out of the top 1,000, SSA national file 1880-2025.
Reading a name’s own curve
Every name record on NameAlmanac opens with its births by year, the peak marked, and lists names with a similar history: names whose share of births rose and fell across the same decades. The records describe the past, not what a name will do next: some names near their peak have faded within a decade, and a name with a long flat record can still start a new rise.
Similar histories: each decade’s share of births, SSA national file.