Top 10 US Baby Names of the 2020s
NameAlmanac ranks the most popular US baby names recorded in the 2020s decade by the Social Security Administration, separated by sex.
Research period:
Research question
Which baby names dominate US birth records in the 2020s decade so far, and how does the modern top-10 compare to the all-time leaders that accumulated their totals across the 20th century?
Methodology
Every number on this page is pulled live from NameAlmanac's current dataset at the moment you load it, ranked from highest to lowest and limited to the top 10. Nothing here is a hardcoded or cached figure: when the underlying Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications, National Data dataset is refreshed, this page reflects the new numbers automatically.
Values are shown in the units and precision published by the U.S. Social Security Administration. Counts are preserved with standard thousand-separators. Records with a missing or zero value on the ranking metric are excluded rather than shown as artificial zeros.
The Social Security Administration publishes the Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications, National Data on its own release schedule; when a new release lands, NameAlmanac updates this ranking automatically without any change to this page. If the agency later revises a published value, the revision flows through the same way. See the methodology page for the full source vintage and refresh history.
Outliers are shown as published, not silently smoothed or clipped, so readers can judge them in context via the source link. Where the source changes its reporting scope between releases, we note it on the methodology page rather than blending incompatible vintages into one ranking.
NameAlmanac maintains an editorial standards process for how rankings are built, how outliers are handled, and how disputed values are corrected. The byline at the top of this page names the editorial owner accountable for its framing. Every figure traces back to the original Social Security Administration record via the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the public source. Corrections, takedowns, or clarifications can be requested through the contact channels in the site footer.
Top 10 US Baby Names of the 2020s
Live data, updates automatically when the source dataset is refreshed
- Liam
Liam
124,842 births
- Noah
Noah
116,024 births
- Oliver
Oliver
89,293 births
- James
James
72,523 births
- Elijah
Elijah
72,049 births
- William
William
68,067 births
- Henry
Henry
68,047 births
- Lucas
Lucas
65,795 births
- Theodore
Theodore
65,579 births
- Benjamin
Benjamin
64,922 births
What this shows Bars show each name's 2020s-decade total, matching this ranking's own selection criterion -- separate from the all-time cumulative totals shown in the table below.
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects NameAlmanac's current dataset (10 rows shown). When the source is refreshed, this table updates automatically.
| # | 2020s rank | Name | All-time total births | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Liam | 358,536 | 2024 |
| 2 | 2 | Noah | 529,602 | 2024 |
| 3 | 3 | Oliver | 269,903 | 2024 |
| 4 | 4 | James | 5,250,638 | 1947 |
| 5 | 5 | Elijah | 380,611 | 2011 |
| 6 | 6 | William | 4,199,696 | 1947 |
| 7 | 7 | Henry | 768,945 | 2025 |
| 8 | 8 | Lucas | 331,092 | 2017 |
| 9 | 9 | Theodore | 317,206 | 2025 |
| 10 | 10 | Benjamin | 826,830 | 1989 |
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration, Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications, National Data. Figures are pulled from NameAlmanac's current dataset and update automatically when the source is refreshed. U.S. Social Security Administration, Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications, National Data. Figures are pulled from NameAlmanac's current dataset and update automatically when the source is refreshed.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is Liam, with a value of 358,536 on the All-time total births column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. No number on this page is hardcoded, when U.S. Social Security Administration publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (358,536) and the 10th-ranked record (826,830) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full rankings population, the aggregate query returns the following summary statistics. These anchors situate the top-10 ranking against the underlying population: how many records exist in total, what the sum of the ranking column is across all qualifying rows, and what the mean per-record value looks like. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied by the aggregate query (records with null or zero values on the ranking column are excluded). The aggregate row is computed by the same database engine that renders the ranking above, against the same snapshot.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Social Security Administration, specifically the Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications, National Data. NameAlmanac ingests the source vintage published by the agency and serves it from its current dataset, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published source vintage propagates to this page automatically. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and how the figures are compiled.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
The 2020s decade is incomplete, only the years released by the Social Security Administration through the most recent annual data drop are included. Rankings are based on cumulative decade totals at the time of the current SSA release vintage; names trending upward late in the decade may not yet reflect their full 2020s prominence. The rankings are a precomputed snapshot; a newer SSA release will refresh the rankings and may reorder the top 10. Names that surge in a single state but remain modest nationally do not appear in this national top 10; state-level decade rankings live in companion ranking sets. Suppression of names with fewer than 5 births in any state-year remains in effect for the underlying counts.
Secondary cut from the same source
Top 10 girls names of the 2020s, companion ranking from the rankings precompute table
- Olivia
Olivia
95,853 births
- Emma
Emma
85,652 births
- Charlotte
Charlotte
78,055 births
- Amelia
Amelia
76,108 births
- Sophia
Sophia
74,758 births
- Mia
Mia
68,154 births
- Isabella
Isabella
67,643 births
- Ava
Ava
63,350 births
- Evelyn
Evelyn
55,734 births
- Harper
Harper
47,509 births
What this shows Bars show each name's 2020s-decade total, matching this ranking's own selection criterion -- separate from the all-time cumulative totals shown in the table below.
Sources
- U.S. Social Security Administration, Baby Names from Social Security Card Applications - https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/