Top Baby Names in South Dakota, 2010s — Most Popular Boys & Girls Names

What the Data Says About the 2010s in South Dakota

During the 2010s (2010–2019), the Social Security Administration recorded 28,881 births across the top 50 boy and top 50 girl names in South Dakota. The decade's leading boy name was Liam with 578 births, while Emma was the top girl name with 590 births. The top 50 boys in this decade collectively accounted for 16,471 births versus 12,410 for the top 50 girls — a common SSA pattern in which the boy-name pool is more concentrated among fewer high-frequency choices. These totals represent only names appearing five or more times per year in South Dakota; rarer names fall below the SSA's privacy-disclosure threshold and are excluded.

The 2010s sits within a specific cultural window of U.S. naming history. Recent decades like the 2010s reflect a distinctive modern pattern — shorter names, vowel-heavy endings, and revived classic forms (Liam, Noah, Olivia, Emma) replacing the trendy -aiden/-ayden constructions of the prior era. Liam and Emma leading South Dakota during this window reflects how regional preferences interact with broader national trends.

Decade totals are computed by summing SSA state-year records for South Dakota across all ten years of the 2010s. Because the SSA suppresses any name with fewer than five annual occurrences in a state, the true number of unique names given in South Dakota during this decade is larger than what this page lists. The dataset also treats every spelling as a separate name — for example, Kayla and Kaylah are tracked independently — so combined-spelling totals would shift the rankings somewhat. This page is provided for informational and research purposes and does not constitute naming, legal, or genealogical advice.