Rankings
Fastest Rising Girl Names (2013 vs 2023)
Girl names with the largest percentage growth over the past decade.
- Nova
- #1 name
- 50
- names ranked
Data updated Jun 2026
The verdict
Nova tops fastest rising girl names (2013 vs 2023) at +831.6% -- it takes just +152.1% to crack this 50-name list, a 5.5x spread from #1 to #50.
- +831.6%
- Nova, #1
- +152.1%
- Blake, #50 (the cutoff)
- 5.5x
- spread, top to bottom
Same ranked rows that render the table below -- row 1 here is row 1 there.
Nova tops the fastest rising girl names (2013 vs 2023) list with a growth % of +831.6%.
According to Social Security Administration data, Nova leads the fastest rising girl names (2013 vs 2023) ranking at +831.6%, ahead of Lainey (+704.3%) and Magnolia (+654.1%). This ranking covers 50 names total, sorted by growth % from SSA birth-registration files.
- Nova #1 by growth %
- Lainey #2
- 50 names ranked
What This Ranking Tells Us
These names show the biggest surge in popularity for girls over the past decade. Many are driven by pop culture (celebrity babies, TV characters), social media trends, and shifting aesthetic preferences. Nature names, vintage revivals, and international names dominate the fastest risers. A name appearing here does not guarantee it will stay popular, many fast-rising names peak quickly and then decline. The growth percentage compares 2023 births to 2013 births, requiring at least 100 births in 2013 and 500 in 2023 to qualify.
What the Data Says About This Ranking
This ranking lists 50 names drawn from the Social Security Administration's baby-name archive, filtered and sorted by growth %. The #1 entry is Nova with a growth % of +831.6%, followed by Lainey at +704.3% and Magnolia at +654.1%. The bottom of the list, Blake (+152.1%), helps define the cutoff qualifying a name for inclusion here. Every name in this ranking meets the SSA's five-occurrence minimum threshold for public disclosure, so private rare names are excluded from consideration.
Across all 50 ranked entries, the average growth % is +313.0%, giving a statistical center of gravity for what "popular" means in this specific ranking context. These names show the biggest surge in popularity for girls over the past decade. Rankings of this type are sensitive to how the underlying data is cut: a top-50 list reflects different signals than a top-500 list, and combining spelling variants (Sophia + Sofia) versus keeping them separate, as the SSA does, produces materially different orderings. The rankings displayed here use the SSA's raw spelling-specific data without combining variants.
Because the SSA updates its baby-name files annually (typically each May), this ranking can shift year over year as new birth cohorts are added and historical revisions are applied. Names that appear to be rising or falling should be interpreted against the five-year-minimum sample sizes SSA requires; short-term movement on a single-year basis can be noisy. Source: Social Security Administration, Baby Names Data. This page summarizes publicly released SSA data and is provided for research and informational purposes only; it is not intended as personal naming advice or a recommendation of any specific name for a given child.
The bar to make this list
Where the #50 cutoff (Blake, +152.1%) sits among qualifying girl names
152% Top 10% higher than 90% of 522 qualifying girl names
Each bar is a band; taller bars hold more qualifying girl names. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source Social Security Administration, Baby Names Data · 2026-06-08
Source: Social Security Administration, Baby Names Data - U.S. Social Security Administration, Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications (ssa.gov).
Source: SSA Baby Names Methodology, names with fewer than 5 annual occurrences are excluded to protect privacy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What drives a name to rise rapidly?
Celebrity babies (Stormi, Rumi), popular TV characters (Khaleesi from Game of Thrones), viral social media moments, and cultural shifts all drive rapid name adoption. Names also rise when parents collectively discover the same aesthetic, nature names, vintage names, and short punchy names are current vectors of rapid adoption.
Do fast-rising names stay popular?
Many do not. Names driven by a single cultural moment (a TV show, a celebrity) often peak within 3-5 years and then decline as they feel dated. Names driven by broader aesthetic shifts (nature names, vintage revivals) tend to have more staying power because they are part of a larger trend rather than a single event.
Nearby Rankings
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
According to the Social Security Administration, as of June 2026 this ranking is computed directly from the agency's public-use baby-name files, which document 105,966 distinct names across 2,181,032 national year-by-name records spanning 1880-2025.
What to do with this ranking
- Nova leads this list at +831.6%, 5.5x the #50 entry (Blake, +152.1%) -- a steep drop-off across the list.
- See Nova's full history -- year-by-year SSA data, decade breakdown, and state popularity. Nova's profile
- Want to weigh two names from this list against each other? Compare names
Every name in this ranking meets the SSA's five-occurrence minimum threshold for public disclosure.
Cite this page
NameAlmanac Editorial. "Fastest Rising Girl Names (2013 vs 2023): Nova Is #1." NameAlmanac. Accessed via https://namealmanac.com/rankings/fastest-rising-girls. Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Name Almanac is rendered directly from the Social Security Administration's public baby-name files, no number is typed in by an editor. This growth % ranking is computed directly from the SSA's raw name files, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.