The Most Common Names in America, and How Common They Really Are
2026-07-08
We tend to know the common names by feel. James, John, Mary. But how common is common, really? Using the Social Security Administration's public record of every U.S. birth from 1880 to 2024, which covers 372,009,150 people across 104,819 different first names, we can put an exact number on it.
The all-time top ten
Here are the ten most given first names in American history, with how many people carry each one and the share of the population that works out to.
| Rank | Name | People | Rarity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | James | 5,262,396 | 1 in 71 |
| 2 | John | 5,196,210 | 1 in 72 |
| 3 | Robert | 4,866,007 | 1 in 76 |
| 4 | Michael | 4,440,391 | 1 in 84 |
| 5 | William | 4,205,026 | 1 in 88 |
| 6 | Mary | 4,154,332 | 1 in 90 |
| 7 | David | 3,682,683 | 1 in 101 |
| 8 | Joseph | 2,672,746 | 1 in 139 |
| 9 | Richard | 2,585,535 | 1 in 144 |
| 10 | Charles | 2,441,151 | 1 in 152 |
James takes the top spot, shared by more than 5.2 million Americans. That is about 1 in every 71 people in the whole record. Even at number ten, Charles is shared by nearly 2.5 million people.
What "1 in 71" actually means
The rarity figure is simple. Take the total number of recorded births, 372 million, and divide by how many got a given name. James lands at 1 in 71, which is why you have met so many. A name given to a few hundred babies over 145 years lands in the millions, like 1 in 2 million, which is why you probably have not.
Notice that the entire top ten is Very Common, our label for any name shared by more than 1 in 200 people. Only a couple hundred names out of more than a hundred thousand are that widespread. Cracking the top ten is genuinely rare air.
One thing the list hides
An all-time list favors names that were huge for decades. Some of these, like Robert and Richard, peaked long ago and are far less common among babies today. Others are still going. The way to tell the difference is the name popularity graph, which shows each name decade by decade.
Curious where your own name lands on this scale? Check how common your name is, or run the full Name Rarity Checker to see your rank, your tier, and a card you can share.