The “most unisex” baby names in the U.S.

Last month, FlowingData crunched some numbers to come up with the 35 most unisex baby names in the U.S. since 1930. Here’s the list:

1. Jessie
2. Marion
3. Jackie
4. Alva
5. Ollie
6. Jody
7. Cleo
8. Kerry
9. Frankie
10. Guadalupe
11. Carey
12. Tommie
13. Angel
14. Hollis
15. Sammie
16. Jamie
17. Kris
18. Robbie
19. Tracy
20. Merrill
21. Noel
22. Rene
23. Johnnie
24. Ariel
25. Jan
26. Devon
27. Cruz
28. Michel
29. Gale
30. Robin
31. Dorian
32. Casey
33. Dana
34. Kim**
35. Shannon

I’m not sure exactly what criteria were used to create the rankings, but it looks like the top unisex names on this list were the top-1,000 names that “stuck around that 50-50 split” the longest from 1930 to 2012.

The FlowingData post also mentions that, though the data is pretty noisy, there might be “a mild upward trend” over the years in the number of babies with a unisex name.

**In 1957, Johnny Carson’s 5-year-old son Kim had his name changed to Richard because he’d been having “a little trouble over his name being mistaken for a girl’s.”

Source: The most unisex names in US history

Image: Adapted from Gallery 1 by Sarah Howells under CC BY-SA 3.0.

[Latest update: Nov. 2013]