About Baby Names by State

Baby Names by State shows how popular a baby name is where you live. Start from a state and see its most popular girls’ and boys’ names, or look up a single name and see how it ranks in every state and how it has changed over more than a century.

Why we built it

National baby-name charts are everywhere, and they all say the same thing. What they miss is that a name can be common in one state and rare in another. Baby Names by State answers the more useful question — how popular is this name here — using the same official data, broken down state by state and year by year.

Where our data comes from

Every number on this site comes from the U.S. Social Security Administration’s “names by state of birth” dataset, a public-domain record of names given to babies born in each state from 1910 onward. To protect privacy, the SSA omits any name that was given to fewer than five babies in a state in a year, so very rare names may not appear in every state. State ranks shown here are computed by birth count within each state, sex, and year. We do not invent or estimate figures.

Who is behind it

Baby Names by State is built and operated by Purcell Analytics. We build data-driven reference sites that answer a specific question well. You can reach the team at hello@babynamesbystate.co.