Salem — #429 US unisex name

What the Data Says About Salem

The Social Security Administration has registered 5,774 babies named Salem between 1976 and 2024, spanning 49 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Salem currently holds the #429 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2023, when 734 babies received it in a single year. Salem is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 4,284 additional births since 1912.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Salem performed strongest in the 2020s, accumulating 3,241 births during that ten-year window. Across the 6 decades of recorded activity, Salem shows a stable profile with only moderate drift from its peak decade. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in North Carolina, which accounts for 568 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and California. In total, SSA state-level files list Salem in 43 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Salem in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 5,774 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.