How popular is the baby name Ryan in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Ryan.
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Back in 1997, the western U.S. state of Colorado welcomed 56,505 babies.
What were the most popular names among these babies? Hannah and Jacob, according to data from the Health Statistics Section of Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment.
The state also revealed the top names within each of its three largest racial/ethnic groups, which it defined as “White/non-Hispanic,” “White/Hispanic,” and “Black.”
Number of babies
Top girl name
Top boy name
White/non-Hispanic
38,729 (69%)
Hannah
Jacob
White/Hispanic
12,951 (23%)
Jessica
Jose
Black
2,582 (5%)
Jasmine
Isaiah
Here are Colorado’s top 50 girl names (overall) and top 50 boy names (overall) of 1997:
Girl names
Hannah
Emily
Jessica
Sarah
Madison
Samantha
Taylor
Alexandra
Ashley
Megan
Elizabeth
Rachel
Alyssa
Alexis
Lauren
Emma
Kayla
Morgan
Amanda
Brianna
Jennifer
Jordan
Abigail
Victoria
Nicole
Brittany
Rebecca
Danielle
Katherine
Sierra
Anna
Mariah
Olivia
Amber
Sydney
Stephanie
Jasmine
Brooke
Haley
Maria
Kaitlyn
Gabrielle
Savannah
Allison
Marissa
Bailey
Courtney
Sara
Erin
Mackenzie
Boy names
Jacob
Michael
Matthew
Joshua
Austin
Tyler
Andrew
Christopher
Nicholas
Brandon
Daniel
Ryan
Joseph
Zachary
David
Alexander
Anthony
John
James
Benjamin
Kyle
Samuel
William
Justin
Jonathan
Dylan
Christian
Jordan
Cody
Robert
Nathan
Aaron
Thomas
Eric
Connor
Cameron
Jose
Noah
Adam
Logan
Isaiah
Sean
Gabriel
Caleb
Jack
Cole
Kevin
Trevor
Ethan
Ian
How do these rankings stack up against the U.S. Social Security Administration’s 1997 rankings for Colorado?
The boy names look similar, but there are two significant discrepancies among the girl names: Alexandra ranked 11 spots lower (19th vs. 8th) and Gabrielle ranked 33 spots lower (75th vs. 42nd) on the federal government’s list.
Other names bestowed in Colorado in 1997 included “Elway, Jamaica, and Mars for baby boys, and October, November, Paradise, and Rejoice for baby girls.”
Elway was no doubt inspired by John Elway, the longtime Denver Broncos quarterback who was about to lead the team to its first Super Bowl victory (in January of 1998).
Speaking of Colorado baby names with historical significance…here are posts about Denver (b. 1859), Colorado (b. 1859), Salida (b. 1881), and Silver Dollar (b. 1889).
Did you know that you can find old vital statistics reports for the City of Philadelphia on the city’s website? And that most of these reports include baby name rankings?
I don’t want you to have to comb through a bunch of PDFs to find Philly’s historical top-ten lists, though, so — just as with New York City and Austin — I gathered all of them into a single blog post.
I was able to track down eleven sets of rankings — six covering 2005 to 2010, five covering 2012 to 2016. Eight of them also happen to include total numbers of babies.
2016
The most popular baby names in Philadelphia in 2016.
Finally, because Philadelphia and New York City are relatively close to one another, I thought I’d compare/contrast the rankings above with the NYC rankings for the same years (2005 to 2016, excluding 2011).
Parents in both cities often liked the same names, but not always at the same time, or to the same degree. During the years that Kayla ranked #1 in Philly, for instance, it was already on the decline in NYC.
Here are all the names that reached the top 10 at least twice in one city, but zero times in the other city:
During the second half of the 2010s, Kessel played with the Pittsburgh Penguins (alongside teammate Sidney Crosby). The team won the Stanley Cup in back-to-back seasons: 2016 and 2017.
The name Kessel does not appear anywhere in the SSA’s state-by-state data, meaning that Pennsylvania was not the birthplace of all five of the baby boys named Kessel (curiously). We do know that at least one of the winger’s namesakes was born inside the Keystone State, though — to Pittsburgh parents Nicole and Adam Hillman. Their baby boy, Kessel Ryan Hillman, arrived in May of 2017 (during the Eastern Conference Finals).
The German surname Kessel is derived from a Middle High German word meaning “kettle, cauldron.” It originally referred to a person who made copper cooking vessels.
According to the U.S. baby name data, Tatum both re-emerged as a girl name and debuted as a boy name in 1973:
Girls named Tatum
Boys named Tatum
1975
91
10
1974
83
14
1973
25
9*
1972
.
.
1971
.
.
*Debut
Why?
Because of child actress Tatum O’Neal, one of the stars of the 1973 comedy/drama movie Paper Moon.
The film followed a pair of con artists — a man and a girl — as they roamed through Kansas during the Great Depression. The man, Moses, was played by actor Ryan O’Neal; the girl, Addie, was played by O’Neal’s daughter Tatum.
Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon“
In April of 1974, 10-year-old Tatum won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. This made her the youngest person ever to win a competitive Academy Award.
How was Tatum O’Neal named? Here’s what the actress said in her memoir:
I was not named for my maternal grandmother, as some accounts have it, but for the great jazz pianist Art Tatum.
The English surname Tatum was derived from the place name Tatham, which originally referred to the homestead of a person called Tata.
What are your thoughts on the baby name Tatum? (Do you like it better for a particular gender, or do you think it works well as a unisex name?)
P.S. The name Addie saw an increase in usage in 1974 — no doubt due to the movie, but perhaps also due to the short-lived TV series Paper Moon, which aired during the last four months of the year. On the show, Addie was played by Jodie Foster.
O’Neal, Tatum. A Paper Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
SSA
Images: Screenshots of Paper Moon and the trailer for Paper Moon
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