Sterling — #372 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Sterling

The Social Security Administration has registered 36,521 babies named Sterling between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Sterling currently holds the #372 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2024, when 880 babies received it in a single year. Sterling is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 3,504 additional births since 1913.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Sterling performed strongest in the 2010s, accumulating 5,463 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Sterling shows a stable profile with only moderate drift from its peak decade. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Texas, which accounts for 3,558 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by California and Pennsylvania. In total, SSA state-level files list Sterling in 49 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Sterling 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 36,521 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.