America’s Top Ten Unisex Baby
Names
In a popular baby naming book published in 1999, the authors
wrote that “in the United States…unisex baby naming
grows only more popular every year.” But does it? The
answer, based on recent data, is no. Comparing data from 1995
to 2005, (the latest year for which official data is currently
available), unisex naming has actually fallen by about 23% in
the United States.
To perform our study of unisex, or androgynous names, we considered
a name to be unisex if it appeared on the list of the Top 1000
most popular baby names both for boys and girls, using Social
Security Administration data. We use this data because
it’s the only authoritative source, besides Census data,
covering the entire United States. Data that is based on polls
or surveys often bears little resemblance to the actual baby
naming habits of millions of Americans.
To determine the popularity of a unisex name, it is not representative
to simply add up the raw numbers of babies, both male and female,
who are given that name. If you did, then Ryan would be the
top unisex name, due to its huge popularity among boys, but
Ryan is a name that is mostly male, with just a few female adherents.
A popular unisex name should, by definition, be one that is
popular with both sexes.
Our method was to place names in “bands,” or ranges,
so we can see where both male and female usage of a name is
popular. Band 1 is the top 100; band 2 the top 200, and so on.
When there is more than one name in a band, then we used actual
raw numbers to rank those names.
According to the latest data, the most popular unisex baby
name in America is Jordan. The names Alexis and Angel round
out the top three unisex names. Below are the top ten unisex
names as of 2005 in the United States:
As you can see, 4 of the 10, Angel, Jayden, Cameron, and Jaden,
tilt sharply toward male usage. Three names, Alexis, Taylor,
and Avery lean clearly female, while Jordan and Riley are popular
names for both boys and girls.
It’s also interesting to note that
except for
Jayden and its variant Jaden, all the names in the top ten
were also top 1000 unisex names in 1995. They are, it seems,
stubbornly androgynous.
It’s often said that unisex names
end up as girls’ names.
While there
is some evidence of this in the numbers we looked at, it doesn’t
always hold true. In fact, of the 30 or so names that were
unisex in 1995 but not in 2005, more of them had moved to the
boy’s side of the table, rather
than the girl’s.
To see the full list of unisex names from 2005, and discover
how androgynous names shifted over a ten year period, check
out the page Unisex Baby Names.
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