After century-long lull, North Carolina parents make this baby name popular again
Were you one of many Marys in your grade school class? Does your Facebook friend list have a sea of Michaels? Or did your name stick out like a sore thumb during every roll call?
Whichever scenario you relate to, it likely had a lot to do with not just what you were named but when you were born.
A pair of old school names, for example, were also among the most popular baby names in North Carolina in 2022.
James, the fifth-most popular boys name in the state, was a hallmark of the national top five for the first 80 years of the 20th century.
And Emma, the fifth-most popular girls name in the state, was a top-25 name during the late 1800s before tumbling down the list till the 2000s.
Thankfully for the curious among us, the Social Security Administration has been tracking name popularity for decades, even back into the 1800s. And much of the data is readily available online for searching.
Here are some of the most popular babies names over past decades:
Most popular baby names of the ‘90s
Jessicas ruled the 1990s, leading the top ten list of most popular girls’ names with more than 300,000 newborns of the name.
The rest of the top ten for the decade included:
Ashley
Emily
Sarah
Samantha
Amanda
Brittany
Elizabeth
Taylor
And Megan
Michaels led the way among baby boys born in the ‘90s: more than 460,000 got the name.
Other top names for boys were:
Christopher
Matthew
Joshua
Jacob
Nicholas
Andrew
Daniel
Tyler
Joseph
Most popular baby names of the ‘80s
If you were born a girl in the 1980s, there’s a decent chance you were among the 460,000 newborns named Jessica during the decade.
The rest of the decade’s top ten list was:
Jennifer
Amanda
Ashley
Sarah
Stephanie
Melissa
Nicole
Elizabeth
And Heather
Michael was the hot name for boys in the ‘80s, with more than 660,000 born over the course of the year.
Other common names for boys were:
Christopher
Matthew
Joshua
David
James
Daniel
Robert
John
And Joseph
Most popular baby names of the ‘70s
The 1970s brought about a number of trends across the U.S., and one of them was affection for the name Jennifer. Almost 600,000 babies got the name that decade.
Other popular girls names included:
Amy
Melissa
Michelle
Kimberly
Lisa
Angela
Heather
Stephanie
And Nicole
Michaels ruled the ‘70s on the boys side, more than 700,000 newborns strong.
Elsewhere on the boys top ten list were:
Christopher
Jason
David
James
John
Robert
Brian
William
And Matthew
Most popular baby names of the ‘60s
The 1960s featured the final years of the “Baby Boom” in the U.S., and almost 500,000 of those babies were named Lisa.
Rounding out the top ten for girls during the ‘60s were:
Mary
Susan
Karen
Kimberly
Patricia
Linda
Donna
Michelle
And Cynthia
Michael claimed the title of most popular boys names for the decade, with a whopping more than 830,000 babies getting the name.
The rest of the most popular boys names were:
David
John
James
Robert
Mark
William
Richard
Thomas
Jeffrey
Most popular baby names of the ‘20s
Mary led the way as the most popular girls name of the Roaring ‘20s, with more than 700,000 babies getting the name through the decade.
The rest of the top ten for girls was:
Dorothy
Helen
Betty
Margaret
Ruth
Virginia
Doris
Mildred
And Frances
More than 500,000 babies were named Robert over the course of the decade, leading the boy’s rankings.
Rounding out the top ten were:
John
James
William
Charles
George
Joseph
Richard
Edward
And Donald
Most popular baby names of the 1800s
The most popular girls name of the 1880s and 1890s was Mary, with more than 200,000 babies getting the name over the course of the two decades.
Other top girls names in the late 19th century were:
Anna
Emma
Elizabeth
Margaret
Minnie
Ida
Bertha
Clara
Alica
Helen
Ruth
Florence
Ethel
And Marie
On the boy’s side, John led the way from the 1880s through the 1890s, with more than 150,000 getting the name.
Other leading boys names of the era were:
William
James
George
Charles
Joseph
Frank
Robert
Edward
Henry
And Thomas
