Henry, Alice, Sophia: the names that never went away

In 1956 Sophia was the 913th most popular girls' name in America. It had been sliding for seventy years and it was about to fall off the list altogether. It never did. It is fifth now, and in England and Wales it is 13th. Sophia is one of 100 girls' names that have been in the American top 1,000 in every year of records we hold, from 1880 to today. For boys the number is 182.

We have written about the names that disappeared, the names that came back and the names that turn over at the top. This is the other list. The names that were there on the first list in 1880 and have been on every list since, through two world wars, the 1950s and the 1990s, without missing a single year. Some are exactly where they were. Some went nearly to the bottom and climbed back to the top. And a few are at the bottom now, with one year left in them, maybe two.

How we counted

The American file lists the thousand most popular names for each sex in each year. A name is on this list if it appears in every year we hold: 1880 to 2008 from the long series, and 2015 to 2025 from the rankings. Boys and girls are counted from their own lists, so a name that is on both, like Jessie, is judged separately for each. There is no hand-picking. Either a name is in all 140 years or it is not.

One limit. We do not hold 2009 to 2014. A name could have slipped out in one of those six years and come back, and we would not see it. So the exact claim is "every year we hold", and the full list is at the foot of the page so you can check any name you like.

182 boys' names and 100 girls'

Start with the 1,000 boys' names of 1880 and watch them drop off. Within five years a third had gone, because the bottom of any year's list is names given to a dozen babies, which come and go. By 1900, 540 were still unbroken. By 1950, 432. By 2008, 214, and 182 are still there in 2025. The girls' list fell faster in every decade from 1910 to 1990: 600 in 1900, 386 in 1950, 115 in 2008, 100 now. From 1950 the boys lost 58% of what was left and the girls lost 74%.

That is the same pattern we found in the top 100: girls' names turn over faster than boys', and the gap opened in the middle of the twentieth century. Of the thirteen names that have never left the top 100, twelve are boys' names and the thirteenth is Elizabeth, which has never been lower than 26th. Widen it to names that have never left the top 200 and it is 19 boys' names and nine girls': Elizabeth, Mary, Anna, Margaret, Katherine, Julia, Maria, Sarah and Sara.

Seven boys in ten, then one in three

The 282 names are not a small corner of the list. In 1880, 70% of American boys had one of them, because John, William, James, Charles and George alone were three boys in ten and every one of them is still on the list. For girls it was 44%, with Mary one girl in fourteen. The boys' share held above 60% all the way to 1969, then fell to 35% by 2008. In the full 2017 file it is 33%, one boy in three. The girls' share went under 30% in 1944 and under 20% in 1966, and is 17% in 2017. In England and Wales in 2025 it is 29% of boys and 13% of girls, and 2024 was the same.

The ones that are where they were

Thirteen boys' names were in the top 50 in 1880 and are in the top 50 in 2025. Henry was ninth then and is fifth now. James third and sixth. William second and ninth. John first and 23rd. For girls it is four names, and one of them has not moved at all: Emma was third in 1880 and it is third in 2025.

Emma's line is not as flat as the two ends suggest. It was 462nd in 1976. Which brings us to the real finding.

The comebacks: Audrey from 988th

Being on the list for 140 years does not mean being popular for 140 years. It means never quite going away. Audrey was 988th in 1880, twelve places from the bottom. It never left, and it is 86th now. Natalie was 870th in 1880 and is 89th. Iris was 945th in 1882 and is 61st. Celeste was 979th in 1880 and is 188th, up 310 places since 2015.

And the biggest names in America today are on this list, not the new ones. Seven of the 2025 top ten boys' names have been in the top 1,000 every year since 1880, and six of the girls'. Olivia, number one, was 543rd in 1971. Noah, number two, was 694th in 1963. Oliver, number three, was 472nd in 1986. Amelia was 491st in 1968, Elijah 689th in 1968, Theodore 314th as recently as 1999. The names that are not on the list are Liam, Mateo and Lucas, and Mia, Isabella, Sofia and Eliana.

Britain agrees on most of these. Olivia is first here, Noah second, Leo third, Amelia third for girls, Theodore ninth, Oliver sixth. Leo was 484th in America in 1995 and is 19th there now. Sophia went from 913th in 1956 to third in 2015, the lowest start of any name on the list that reached the top three. Mason is next, 886th in 1957 and third in 2015, and it is 39th now.

The ones hanging on

Twenty-two of the 182 boys' names and nine of the 100 girls' are below 800th in 2025. Joe, 20th in 1880, is 994th. Harold, 12th in 1915, is 993rd. Barbara, second for eight years in the 1930s and 40s, is 968th, and Nancy, sixth in 1950, is 967th. Linda, the biggest single year any name has ever had, is 902nd. Deborah, second in 1955, is 864th. Any of them could be gone next year, and the pattern of the last ten years says some of them will be.

One of those is different. Reuben is 889th in America and has never been higher than 147th there. In England and Wales it is 29th, with 1,412 boys in 2025, 37 times as common per head. The same goes for a whole row of old names America has kept on the list but near the bottom and Britain has put near the top: Harry 775th there, 19th here; Alfred 840th and 76th; Stanley 863rd and 97th; Arthur 87th and 5th; Albert 614th and 57th; Oscar 223rd and 8th. Nancy, 967th in America, is 78th here with 604 girls.

The ones that left

To 2008 the list was longer: 214 boys' names and 115 girls'. Since then 32 boys' names and 15 girls' have dropped out for the first time. Ten boys' names and three girls' were already gone when our rankings pick up in 2015, so they left somewhere in the six years we cannot see: Clarence, 17th in 1885, Bernard, Howard (which came back for a few years), Glenn, Milton, Sidney, Ross, Nick, Clinton, Cornelius and Jean for boys; Janet, 16th in 1938, Theresa and Lorena for girls.

The rest went one or two a year. Susan, second in the American rankings from 1957 to 1960, was last on the list in 2020. Larry, tenth in 1947, in 2022. Carl, 22nd in 1894, in 2023. Kathleen, Carolyn, Willie, Ernest, Ralph and Gerald all went between 2018 and 2021. And in 2025 three names fell off that had been on every list we hold to 2024: Cynthia, which was seventh in 1957 and 826th in 2024, Allan and Maurice.

Those are the recent ones. The longest runs that ended earlier belong to the names of the 1920s and 30s. Betty was second from 1928 to 1934 and left the list in 1996, after 117 years on it. Dorothy was second in 1920, left in 2004 after 125 years, and has since come back: it is 421st now. Donna, fifth in 1959, left in 2006. Joan, fifth in 1931, left in 1993. Earl left in 2006, Fred in 2002, Herbert in 2000, Norman in 2005. The last three to go before our series ends, in 2007, were Elmer, Karl and Fredrick.

Missed by a year

Some names missed the list by a single year. Ivy was out in 1946 and only 1946; it is 39th in America now and ninth in England and Wales, with 1,698 girls. Silas was out in 1967 alone and is 71st. Jason, the second most popular boys' name in America for five years in the 1970s, was out in 1899. Tommy missed 1880 itself and has been on every list since. Lincoln was out in 1884 and in 1986, and in no other year, and is 69th. A few of today's big names had longer gaps: Ava was out from 1973 to 1985 and is 11th, Lily out from 1965 to 1978 and 18th, Ella out from 1984 to 1989 and 29th, Ezra out from 1962 to 1967 and 20th. We wrote about the names that came back on their own.

England and Wales

We hold two years of British records, so Britain cannot have its own version of this list. What we can do is run America's list against Britain's top 100. Of the 100 most popular boys' names in England and Wales in 2025, 47 have been in the American top 1,000 every year since 1880. That is exactly the number in America's own top 100. The other 53 are the names America did not have or has let go: Muhammad, Luca, Freddie, Archie, Theo, Jude, Arlo, Alfie, Rory and the rest of the pet names and the new arrivals. For girls it is 21 of 100 here against 35 there. Britain's girls' top 100 is Lily, Isla, Florence, Freya, Poppy, Elsie, Ivy, Phoebe, Mabel and Matilda, and none of those lasted every year in America.

Per head, the stayers Britain likes more than America does are the Victorian ones: Reuben 37 times as common here, Harry 26, Alfred 17, Arthur 13, Frederick 10, Stanley nine, Oscar eight, Albert eight, George six; Nancy 12 times, Rosa seven, Martha five, Daisy five. The ones America likes more are the ones it uses now: Christian 11 times as common there, Andrew 11, Julian ten, Wesley eight; Natalie 15 times, Lillian eight, Emma six, Audrey six. Of the 282 names, 276 appear in the British file at all, and 195 went to 50 or more babies here in 2025.

What we cannot tell you

Why these 282 and not others. The files record what parents chose, not why, and the list has names of every kind on it: Bible names, kings, Victorian favourites, Spanish names like Jose and Luis that have been on the American list since 1880. We cannot see 2009 to 2014, so a name could have missed one of those years without our knowing. The thousandth place is a line in the sand: a name at 1,001st is not on the list and a name at 1,000th is, and Corinne, which was out from 2021 to 2024 and came back at 999th in 2025, shows how little separates the two. And Britain has two years of records, so we have measured America's stayers against Britain, not Britain's own.

What it means for you

If you want a name that will not sound like a particular decade, this list is where to look, and the full 282 are below. The names on it that are climbing right now are the ones in the comeback table: Theodore, Henry, Eleanor, Iris, Nora, Josephine. The ones at the bottom of it are a different sort of choice. Harold, Eugene, Barbara and Nancy have 140 years of records and a few hundred babies a year. If you give one of them, you are keeping it on the list.