Baby names 2023

A not-so-serious post for fun but still curious

The Social Security Administration has posted the data for the top 1000 baby names used in 2023. Here is what I found interesting, all of which might be useful in a trivia game or for a crossword puzzle. If you just want the top 20 names, scroll down to Figure 6.

First, I’ll note that there are 1,379,192 male babies and 1,164,322 female babies in the data set. There are typically more male births than female births. All the charts use the percentage of the name used within males and females and not counts because of this.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of the first letter used. For females, A is the clear winner, while for males, it is J, which is also the biggest difference in use between males and females. Q, U, X, and Y are rare for both groups. Interestingly, M is popular for both genders and is about equally used.

Figure 1. Data from the Social Security Administration

What is the distribution of baby names by rank? Should we expect a Pareto distribution or something more uniform? In other words, are the top names used a lot or a little more than the other names? Figure 2 is the first in a series of charts exploring this. Here, both male and female names are combined, and you can see the quick drop-off from the top roughly 20 names.

Figure 2. Data from the Social Security Administration

If we zoom in on Figure 2 and show the top 50 (Figure 3), you can see the quick drop-off from the top 3 names and then a nice steady decline from 4 to 14. I’m not really a big fan of the stacked bar chart because, while I can see the male distribution well, the female distribution is difficult to understand, and it may be that the drop-off is different for the two groups.

Figure 3. Data from the Social Security Administration

The next two figures, 4 and 5, are the distributions of the top female and male names, respectively. The drop-off at the top is very different. The top 2 male names are highly used, and even the third is high, and then there is a noticeable drop-off. The female drop-off is fairly consistent from 1 through 8. Notice also the y-axis scale is different in the two figures. The top male name is used 1.14% of the time, while the top female name is used 0.87% of the time. In other words, the top male name is used 31% more than the top female name. This leads me to the next graph.

Figure 4. Data from the Social Security Administration

Figure 5. Data from the Social Security Administration

Figure 6 shows the use difference by rank. The top male name, Liam, is used 30% more than the top female name, Olivia. One might say that the top male name is overused as compared to the top female name. In fact, only 4 of the top 20 names are overused by females, 4–7, and in those cases, less than the overused male names.

Figure 6. Data from the Social Security Administration

Since the top 1000 names add up to 100%, female names must be overused as compared to male names somewhere. Can you guess where it is in the rankings? Figure 7 is the same as Figure 6, but for all 1000 names.

Figure 7. Data from the Social Security Administration

I find Figure 7 strange. When we compare the use of names by rank, males overuse their names as compared to females consistently in the top 250, except for spots 4–7. They are overused in a couple of other spots, but by the time we get to rank 375, only female names get overused, and when they do, it is in chunks. Now, keep in mind that the name used on the right side is small, so it doesn’t take more than a few uses. For example, at rank 990, both male and female names are used at 0.01%, with 222 uses of Stone and 257 uses of Amyra.

One might say that people are more interested in popular names for males and more willing to go with unique names for females. Why? I don’t know, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts about this in the comments. I wonder if I should look at the names in the light purple boxes for female names that are on the rise over the next few years.

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