The U.S. Census Bureau recently released data on the most common first names reported in the 2020 Census.
The full set of data, which contains 5.2 million first names, covers 302 million people (91.1% of the enumerated population). The portion of the data released to the public features more than 53,000 names — every name that belonged to at least 100 people.
Impressively, the top 25 names each belonged to more than 1 million (!) people:
- Michael (3.5 million)
- John (3.1)
- James (3.0)
- David (2.8)
- Robert (2.8)
- William (2.2)
- Mary (1.8)
- Maria (1.7)
- Daniel (1.6)
- Joseph (1.6)
- Richard (1.6)
- Thomas (1.5)
- Christopher (1.5)
- Jennifer (1.3)
- Matthew (1.3)
- Jose (1.2)
- Charles (1.2)
- Elizabeth (1.2)
- Patricia (1.2)
- Linda (1.2)
- Mark (1.1)
- Andrew (1.1)
- Anthony (1.1)
- Kevin (1.0)
- Brian (1.0)
Within the top 1,000, the most “predominantly male” and “predominantly female” names were Kurt and Kathleen, respectively. The name that came closest to a 50-50 split (between male and female) was Harley. And the names that had the “highest shares of identification with” particular racial/ethnic groups were…
| White (non-Hispanic) | 1. Beth, 95.0% white 2. Jill, 93.7% 3. Scott, 93.2% 4. Doug, 92.8% 5. Kathleen, 92.7% |
| Black or African American (non-Hispanic) | 1. Tyrone, 81.7% Black 2. Willie, 79.9% 3. Reginald, 77.9% 4. Maurice, 60.0% 5. Terrance, 56.0% |
| Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic) | 1. Mohammad, 56.9% Asian/Islander 2. Mohammed, 47.9% 3. Son, 24.7% 4. Andy, 21.0% 5. Jenny, 20.7% |
| American Indian and Alaska Native (non-Hispanic) | 1. Cheyenne, 3.2% Native American 2. Dakota, 2.5% 3. Vernon, 2.0% 4. Harley, 1.9% 5. Donovan, 1.8% |
| Two or more races (non-Hispanic) | 1. Kai, 19.5% multi-racial 2. Aaliyah, 12.3% 3. Nevaeh, 12.0% 4. Mya, 11.3% 5. Maya, 11.2% |
| Hispanic or Latino | 1. Guadalupe, 98.5% Hispanic 2. Blanca, 98.4% 3. Mayra, 97.8% 4. Yesenia, 97.8% 5. Juana, 97.3% |
And what about the rest of the names?
I haven’t looked at every single one (yet!), but I did scan thousands of the rarest. I spotted…
- Arabic names like Boutros and Taoufik,
- Armenian names like Vartouhi and Mesrop,
- Bosnian names like Avdo and Hatidza,
- Brazilian names like Elenilson and Moacir,
- Dutch names like Geert and Leendert,
- Cambodian names like Sokhoeun and Sreymom,
- Ethiopian names like Fikre and Tesfai,
- Filipino names like Liwanag and Rizalito,
- Greek names like Afroditi and Kyriacos,
- German names like Edeltraut and Albrecht,
- Hungarian names like Zsuzsa and Gyongyi,
- Indian names like Nagaraja and Tarannum,
- Italian names like Guglielmo and Pierluigi,
- Finnish names like Pirkko and Heikki,
- Japanese names like Hidenori and Kazuaki,
- Korean names like Sooji and Hyeong,
- Lithuanian names like Algimantas and Gintaras,
- Laotian names like Khamphay and Bounpheng,
- Persian names like Morvarid and Rouzbeh,
- Russian names like Pyotr and Genrikh,
- Spanish names like Salustiano and Reveriano,
- Serbian names like Ljubisa and Djuro,
- Thai names like Chatchai and Waraporn,
- Tibetan names like Tseten and Phuntsok,
- Turkish names like Songul and Nevzat, and
- Vietnamese names like Ngoi and Ngot.
(None of the above have ever popped up in the SSA data.)
I also noticed Utahna, Quisqueya, Littlejohn, and Garibaldi.
One that I did not see, however, was Abcde — a real name has been given to hundreds of U.S. babies since the 1990s. I looked this one up specifically because the Census Bureau stated in its methodology section that it had deleted “many obvious nonnames such as ABCDEFG, ADULT FEMALE, DONT KNOW, and NO NOMBRE.” I wonder if Abcde wasn’t mistakenly omitted…?
Sources:
- Census.gov:
- Behind the Name
Image: Adapted from US Census 2020 tools of the trade by Daniel Case under CC BY-SA 4.0.
