Jessica to Ava: how fast the top 100 turns over

Jessica was the most popular girls' name in America in 1990. It is 665th now. Ashley was second and is 164th. Taylor was seventh in 1997 and is 403rd. Everybody knows names go out of fashion. What we wanted to know is how fast, and whether it is getting faster. So we took the 100 most popular names for each sex in every year we hold, 1880 to 2025, and asked a plain question of each list: how many of these names were in the top 100 twenty years ago?

In 1900 the answer for girls was 77. In 2017 it was 22. Of the 100 most popular girls' names in America that year, 78 had not been in the top 100 in 1997. Boys move at about half the speed: 80 of 100 kept in 1900, 51 in 2017 and 51 again in 2025. And not one of the ten most popular boys' names of 2025 was in the top ten in 2005.

How we counted

The top 100 is the 100 most popular names for one sex in one year, exactly as the official files rank them. For each year we counted how many of those names had also been in the top 100 one year earlier, ten years earlier and twenty years earlier. That is the whole method. There is no hand-picked list and nothing to argue with except the ranking itself. For America we hold the Social Security Administration's series from 1880 to 2008 and its rankings from 2015 to 2025, so a comparison across the gap uses the years either side of it. For England and Wales we hold two years, 2024 and 2025, so Britain gets one year of change and a different kind of comparison at the end.

1900: three names a year, and most came back

The top 100 has never stood still. In the 1880s and 1890s about three boys' names and three girls' names changed every year, and that is nearly the same as now: four boys' names and five or six girls' names a year since 2016. What has changed is what happened to a name after it moved. In the 1880s and 1890s, 52 of the 81 boys' names that dropped out of the top 100 were back inside it within five years, and 30 of the 53 girls' names. They were not falling out of fashion. They were bobbing about on either side of hundredth place. Since 1920 about one leaver in five has come back, and from 2016 to 2020 it was one boys' name out of eighteen.

That is why 1900 kept so much of 1880. The girls' names that did go between the two years were Lizzie, 67th in 1880, Flora, Maud, Etta and Harriet, and the names that replaced them were Mildred, 20th in 1900, Gladys, Dorothy, Hazel and Irene. The boys lost Otto, Ira and Isaac and gained Harold, Lester and Leroy. Twenty-three girls' names and twenty boys' in twenty years.

The girls broke first

The girls' list held at about 75 kept until the middle of the 1920s and then fell off a shelf: 75 in 1920, 59 in 1930, 53 in 1940, 50 in 1943. Between 1920 and 1940, 47 girls' names left the top 100 and 47 came in. Out went Gladys, 22nd in 1920, Lucille, Ethel, Thelma and Hazel, the names that had arrived twenty years before. In came Patricia, third by 1940, Judith fourth, Carol sixth, Linda eighth, Sandra, Joyce and Joan. The boys did not follow for another decade: 83 kept in 1930, 71 in 1940, 68 in 1950.

The second break came in the 1970s, and this time both sexes went together. Girls fell from 49 kept in 1960 to 37 in 1980 and 35 in 1985, the lowest the series had been. Between 1960 and 1980, 63 girls' names changed: out went Linda, by then third, Donna, Debra, Barbara, Brenda and Nancy, and in came Amanda, second by 1980, Jessica, Melissa, Heather, Nicole and Tiffany. Boys went from 63 kept in 1960 to 53 in 1980, and 47 names changed: Terry, Mike, Ricky, Bruce and Steve out, Jason, third by 1980, Joshua, Justin, Ryan and Nicholas in.

Since 1980: boys level, girls still falling

After 1980 the boys stopped speeding up. They have kept about half of their top 100 over twenty years ever since: 53 in 1980, 62 in 1992, 57 in 2000, 48 in 2008, which is the low, 53 in 2015 and 51 in 2025. Forty-five years at the same speed. The girls went on falling. From 42 kept in 2000 to 34 in 2008, 26 in 2015 and 22 in 2017, and then back up a little, to 33 in 2025. Even the recovery leaves the girls' list turning over twice as fast as it did in 1920.

Between 1997 and 2017, 78 girls' names changed. Out went Jessica, second in 1997, Ashley third, Taylor seventh, Alexis, Megan, Kayla, Rachel, Lauren, Alyssa, Amanda, Brianna, Jennifer and Brittany. In came Ava, Isabella, Mia, Charlotte, Amelia, Evelyn, Harper and Avery. The 22 that stayed the course were led by Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Abigail, Emily and Elizabeth. For boys, 49 changed: Brandon, Tyler, Zachary, Justin, Kyle and Kevin out, Liam, Oliver, Aiden, Henry, Jackson and Sebastian in.

The top ten shows the same thing more sharply. In 1900, nine of the ten most popular boys' names had been in the top ten in 1880. In 2025 the top ten is Liam, Noah, Oliver, Theodore, Henry, James, Elijah, Mateo, William and Lucas, and none of them was in the top ten of 2005, which was Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Matthew, Ethan, Andrew, Daniel, Anthony, Christopher and Joseph. James, William and Michael are still in the top 100, where they have been in every year since 1880. The girls' top ten has always moved more: four of ten kept in 1900, one in 1940, none in 1980, three now (Olivia, Emma, Isabella).

Put it another way. The typical name in the boys' top 100 of 2025 has been there for 21 years. The typical name in the girls' top 100 has been there for ten. Twelve boys' names have been in the top 100 in every year we hold; one girls' name has, Elizabeth, fourth in 1880 and 17th now. We wrote about those thirteen in the names nobody respells.

The last twenty years

Here are the names that have come into the American top 100 since 2005 and climbed highest, and the names that were highest in 2005 and have since gone. 67 girls' names changed over those twenty years and 49 boys'.

Liam was 103rd in 2005 and is first. Ailany was not in the top 1,000 in 2005, or in 2022, and is 14th. The leavers have not gone far yet: Samantha was eighth in 2005 and is 151st, Anna 22nd and 107th, Hailey 26th and 104th. The names that left between 1960 and 1980 show where that road goes. Patricia, third in 1940, is outside the top 1,000. Linda is 902nd. Carol is gone.

The last single year, 2024 to 2025, was ordinary. Five girls' names changed in America: Ailany, Amara, Georgia, Juniper and Sienna in, Aaliyah, Allison, Anna, Athena and Hailey out. Six boys' names changed: Adriel, Archer, Arthur, Atlas, Eithan and Emiliano in, Adam, Amir, Colton, Eli, Jaxon and Parker out. Arthur is in the American top 100 for the first time since 1969.

Britain: one year, and a different test

England and Wales changed at the same pace as America last year. Seven girls' names came into the top 100 between 2024 and 2025: Eliana, 116th to 62nd, Gracie, Anaya, Marnie, Lilah, Alba and Frankie. Out went Ellie, 88th to 119th, Jessica, 95th to 139th, Amelie, Jasmine, Nellie, Sara and Zoe. Four boys' names changed: Vincent, Carter, Stanley and Ruben in, Grayson, Bodhi, Brody and Leon out. Every one of those names had 50 or more babies in both years, so the moves are real and not the bottom of the table shuffling.

One year cannot tell you how fast Britain's top 100 turns over, and we are not going to pretend it can. What the files can tell you is how old Britain's top 100 is, measured against America's past. We took the England and Wales top 100 of 2025 and counted how many of its names were in America's top 100 of 1880, 1920, 1950, 1980 and 2000, and then did the same for America's own top 100 of 2025.

Britain's girls' top 100 has 23 names from America's top 100 of 1880 and 11 from its top 100 of 2000. America's own list has 20 and 22. So British parents are choosing from the 1880s American list about as often as American parents are, and from the 2000 list half as often. Florence is fifth here, was 14th in America in 1880, and is 391st there now. Mabel is 16th here, was 22nd there in 1880, and is 201st. Elsie is eighth here and left the American top 100 in 1933. Harriet is 59th here and left in 1889. Matilda, Olive, Eliza and Ada are the same story.

The boys are more striking. Britain's boys' top 100 has 30 names from America's list of 1880 and 30 from its list of 2000. America's own has 23 and 45. Arthur is fifth in England and Wales, was 14th in America in 1880, and has just scraped back in at 87th. George is seventh here, was fifth there in 1880, and is 126th. Alfred is 76th here, was 35th there, and is 840th. Albert 57th, 16th and 614th. Frederick and Ralph are in the British top 100 and left the American one in 1957 and 1963. We showed in an earlier article that 58 of Britain's top 100 boys' names are not in America's top 100 at all. A good part of the reason is that Britain went back for the names America had finished with.

What we cannot tell you

Why. The files record what parents chose, not why they stopped choosing it, and nothing here says whether a name fell because it was everywhere or for some other reason. We cannot say how fast Britain's top 100 turns over, because we hold two years of it; the 1880s comparison is a way round that, not an answer to it. We hold no American ranking for 2009 to 2014, so the twenty-year figures for 2015 to 2025 compare the years either side of that gap, and the “years in the top 100” medians assume a name in the top 100 in both 2008 and 2015 was there in between. And a top 100 is a line drawn at hundredth place: a name that falls from 50th to 101st counts as gone, and one that falls from 5th to 95th does not. The twenty-year figure is a measure of turnover, not of how far any one name fell.

What it means for you

If you are choosing from this year's top 100, the files say what usually happens next. Of the girls' top 100 of 2005, 67 were out of it by 2025. Of the boys', 49. A boys' name in the top 100 has, typically, been there for 21 years already and a girls' name for ten, and the ones with the longest runs are the ones that have never left: James, William, Elizabeth. A popular girls' name is a bet on the next twenty years, and the odds have been two to one against for forty years. A popular boys' name is a coin toss, and it has been one since 1980.

None of that makes a name wrong. Jessica was a wonderful name in 1990 and is a wonderful name now, and the 665th place says only that fewer parents are picking it. It does mean that “popular” is a photograph, not a guarantee, and the girls' photograph is taken with a faster shutter.