| ACTUARIAL NOTE | |
| Number 139 | SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION |
| June 1998 | Office of the Chief Actuary |
by Michael W. Shackleford, A.S.A.
Between 1954 and 1984 the Social Security Administration occasionally published a listing of surnames and their popularity in the Report of Distribution of Surnames in the Social Security Number File. This note expands on that project by presenting the most popular given names.
The source file is a one percent sample of Social Security Number card applications. The selection criteria is based on the last four digits of the Social Security Number, which are random and not correlated with a particular geographical region. In cases where multiple cards were issued to the same person, a reason for this might be a lost card or a name change, the name on the last application was used. This file is not limited to persons born in the United States but is representative of all Social Security Number card holders.
For purposes of this document, names have not been edited or grouped together according to spelling variations of the same name. People quoting from this document are urged to explicitly acknowledge this qualification.
Three tabulations are presented in this note. The first two are an historal perspective on the three most frequent names for both sexes for every year of birth from 1900 to 1997. The third is the 40 most frequent names for boys and girls born in 1996, the most recent year that full data is available.
In addition the following tabulations are available on the Office of the Chief Actuary's web site.
Table 1 displays the three most frequent male given names for each year of birth from 1900 to 1997. The number to the right of each name indicates the frequency in the sample per 1,000 births of the same gender.
| Table 1.--Most Frequent Male Given Names for Years of Birth 1900-97 |
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| Year of birth |
First |
Second |
Third |
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| Name |
Rate |
Name |
Rate |
Name |
Rate |
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| 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 |
John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John John Robert Robert Robert Robert Robert Robert Robert Robert Robert James Robert Robert Robert Robert James Robert James James Robert James James James Robert James John Robert James Michael Robert Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael David David Michael David Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael |
62.9 51.9 58.7 54.4 52.5 56.7 56.7 53.1 53.4 52.5 49.6 53.1 54.0 50.1 52.4 49.1 54.3 51.9 50.4 51.4 46.6 49.8 48.8 48.3 47.8 49.3 47.0 46.3 46.2 48.7 45.4 49.2 49.6 46.9 43.2 44.5 46.5 46.0 47.0 44.9 44.5 44.5 49.1 46.0 44.6 44.4 44.8 44.4 41.5 40.2 38.7 38.1 39.1 37.2 36.5 37.5 35.1 34.7 34.8 34.2 34.7 34.1 33.6 33.9 35.5 35.7 35.1 36.8 36.3 41.1 40.9 37.3 38.7 36.1 38.3 38.3 34.7 36.9 36.5 32.5 35.0 32.7 34.3 35.2 34.9 30.3 32.8 31.9 30.3 30.0 28.9 28.8 27.6 22.4 20.0 20.2 18.6 20.3 |
William William William William William William William William William William William William William William William William William William William William William Robert Robert Robert Robert Robert John James John John James James John James James Robert James James James James Robert John Robert Robert James Robert Robert John James Robert James James Robert Robert Michael James Robert James David David Michael Michael John John, Michael John James David David David David David John Christopher Christopher Jason Christopher Jason Jason Jason Jason Jason Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Matthew Jacob Matthew Jacob |
47.4 51.4 44.3 40.1 41.5 42.4 42.0 42.7 39.2 46.0 38.1 42.3 41.2 40.0 39.9 41.9 41.0 44.5 40.6 39.1 41.6 41.7 40.9 45.9 46.5 44.9 45.6 43.6 41.4 43.7 43.3 42.3 42.6 41.6 42.9 43.1 42.7 43.5 45.2 41.4 41.5 43.0 44.7 44.6 43.6 41.9 42.3 44.1 41.4 39.9 38.6 37.9 37.5 36.6 35.7 34.7 33.8 33.3 34.4 32.0 33.3 33.6 33.1 33.6 33.2 31.2 31.0 29.7 30.5 28.5 29.5 27.0 26.9 26.2 28.4 25.5 26.7 28.4 27.3 26.2 24.0 24.3 28.7 30.3 30.7 29.2 28.2 25.3 25.3 24.2 23.3 23.0 20.3 18.1 17.4 17.1 17.4 16.0 |
James James James James George, James James James James James James James James James James James James James James Robert James James James James William James James William John James James John John James John John John John John John John John James John John John John John Robert John John Robert John John James John David, Robert David Robert Robert James John John David David John John James James John John David David James Christopher Jason Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Christopher Jason Matthew Matthew Matthew Matthew Matthew Matthew Matthew Joshua Joshua Matthew Joshua Joshua Christopher Matthew Jacob Matthew |
33.4 31.5 34.3 33.1 30.9 30.3 31.6 30.6 31.4 35.8 35.8 33.1 34.4 33.5 34.5 34.7 36.1 39.1 35.5 37.8 37.9 40.4 40.6 43.8 40.7 43.1 41.4 42.7 40.4 41.3 43.2 41.2 39.6 40.9 39.0 38.2 40.0 41.0 39.4 39.7 39.9 41.6 37.8 38.5 43.5 38.9 41.5 41.9 41.3 39.6 38.4 37.6 34.2 36.0 35.3 34.3 33.5 32.2 31.0 31.8 29.1 30.8 31.6 32.4 30.7 29.8 28.2 28.3 28.1 27.3 26.8 23.8 23.6 26.1 25.0 24.8 23.6 25.5 26.1 23.4 22.4 22.2 24.9 23.7 22.5 22.7 20.4 22.2 20.1 19.6 19.4 16.8 16.9 16.2 15.8 16.4 15.8 |
Table 2 displays the three most frequent female given names for each year of birth from 1900 to 1997. The number to the right of each name indicates the frequency in the sample per 1,000 births of the same gender.
Table 3 lists the 40 most popular given names for the year of birth of 1996. The sample consists of 19,662 girls and 20,264 boys. The numbers on the left represent rank. The number to the right of each name represents the frequency per 1,000 births of the same gender. Several times in this table there were ties in popularity order. In these cases the order and frequency are given for the first name and left blank in subsequent names.
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