The 2024 baby name statistics are available, and Laura Wattenberg and Philip Cohen have some thoughts

Wattenberg always finds interesting things in the name data:

Classic simplicity is not on the menu for girls Last year, 612 American girls were named Ann, Joan and Susan, combined. To put that low number in perspective, 613 girls were named Calliope. . . .

The “exalted” name wave has crested Names like King, Prince, Messiah, Royal, Pharaoh and Legend are now falling. The new trend in word-based names for boys is more about hot sounds than meanings. One-syllable names like Truce, Coast, Rain, Jett, Crue and Psalm are rising fast. . . .

Xtreme spelling continues to rise More parents are choosing names that are not just creatively spelled, but designed to catch the eye and upend expectations. 10 of the 20 fastest-rising boys names included an X or Z, including Xyleek, Zyro and Zeovanni. Meanwhile 134 different names in the statistics include the doubled vowels ii or uu, as in Kyiir and Truu. . . .

Cohen shares the graph I’ve placed at the top of this post, along with some interesting bits:

Harvey is doing well, up 40% and climbing 169 spots in the ranking. In 2018, after Hurricane Harvey and the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal of the previous year, Tristan Bridges and I [Cohen] asked, “The name Harvey appears to be on the way to becoming more popular. Will the Harvey’s of 2017 contaminate this name for the American public?” We now have our answer: After four years of stalled growth, Harvey is back on track . . .

The sudden drop in boys being given the names Israel (-21%) and Zion (-18%) in 2024 probably has to do with Israel’s war in Gaza. Those names are most common among Black (especially Zion) and Latino families: Israel is more common in Mexico than in the US; Zion became popular after Lauryn Hill named her son (who is also Bob Marley’s grandson) Zion, and had a beautiful hit song about him in 1998, and Zion has long been associated with Black Christian churches. With the latest war, associating even indirectly with the country of Israel, and Zionism, seems less appealing. . . .

Finally, the androgyny report. About 75% of babies are given names that are either 99% male or 99% female at birth. That has dropped from about 82% over the last 50 years, with most of the slippage coming in the decline of all-boy names . . . What are the most common androgynous names in 2024? Parker, Charlie (that’s funny, Charlie Parker), and Tatum. (Emerson was number two on this list last year, but has crossed over to 61% female.) Tatum is an interesting case: growing more popular among boys and girls pretty equally. Stay tuned . . .

Regarding the graphs above, check out those y-axes. Even the most common of these names are being given to only 0.8% of girls and 1.2% of boys. Compared to how babies were named in previous centuries, there are no very common names. Names have become more standardized in their sounds (or, at least they were up to 2006, which is the last time I looked), but no individual name is as popular as the Johns, Roberts, and Marys of the past century. Here are a couple of graphs from Regression and Other Stories: