These Were the Top Baby Names of 2025

The Social Security Administration (SSA) just released its list of 2025’s most popular baby names. Their list gathers the names of every recorded birth in the U.S.—millions of babies, every state, every background. Every year, we do the same thing with our own Babylist Babes name list, tallying up the most popular names among our own families.

So naturally, we had to see how the national list stacks up against ours. The short version: there's a lot of overlap—Charlotte, Amelia, Oliver and Noah are crowd favorites on both. But Babylist parents tend to be a little ahead of the curve, and the differences between the two lists are where it gets interesting. Names like Eleanor, Lucy and Luca ranked significantly higher on Babylist Babes than they did nationally—a sign that our parents were onto something before the rest of the country caught up.

The Top Baby Names of 2025 According to the SSA

The most popular social security names are in; here are the top 10 for girls and boys.

Top 10 baby girl names

1. Olivia

2. Charlotte

3. Emma

4. Amelia

5. Sophia

6. Mia

7. Isabella

8. Evelyn

9. Sofia

10. Eliana

On the girls' side, Olivia is in a class of her own—this marks her seventh consecutive year at #1, a streak that started in 2019. The biggest mover is Eliana, which jumped from #18 to #10, the largest single-year climb in the girls' Top 10. It's a name with cross-cultural appeal and its rise fits a broader pattern of globally rooted names breaking through. Charlotte climbed two spots, nudging Emma and Amelia each down a spot. Interestingly, Sophia and Sofia both live in the top 10 girls’ names, and each rose one place. And if you consider them together, they’re even more popular than they appear.

SSA’s top 10 boy names

1. Liam

2. Noah

3. Oliver

4. Theodore

5. Henry

6. James

7. Elijah

8. Mateo

9. William

10. Lucas

For boys, the story is dominance. Liam has held the SSA #1 spot for nine consecutive years — from 2017 through 2025—making it one of the longest-running #1 names in modern SSA history. Noah has followed it at #2 for nearly as long, and together the two have owned the top of the boys' list for over a decade. The four names at the top—Liam, Noah, Oliver and Theodore—didn't budge a single position from 2024. Most notably, there are actually no new names in the boys' Top 10 at all, just a few swaps in the middle: Henry and James traded places, as did Elijah and Mateo, and William and Lucas. Mateo's continued climb to #8 is the most interesting movement—it's a name that barely cracked the SSA Top 50 a decade ago and is now a fixture in the top 10.

Babylist Babes Most Popular Baby Names

So where do Babylist parents land? Pretty close to the national list—but not identical, and that's where it gets interesting.

Babylist Babes is a smaller, more specific group: parents who chose to share their baby's name with us, many of them actively in the thick of the naming process right now. That tends to mean our data skews a little trendier and a little more future-facing than the SSA's full-year national picture. Names gaining momentum show up here before they fully break through nationally—and names that have peaked sometimes cool off here first.

The overlap between the two datasets is real: Noah, Oliver, Henry, Charlotte and Amelia all rank near the top of both. But if you look a little closer, and you'll see where Babylist parents are diverging—names like Eleanor (#12 on SSA), Lucy (#25) and Luca (#14) ranked significantly higher on Babylist Babes than nationally, suggesting they're still on their way up. That's the Babylist Babes edge: Babylist parents are naming their babies not just what's popular, but what's about to be.

Babylist Babes top 10 girl names

Charlotte held the top spot on Babylist Babes in 2025, with Olivia right behind after reclaiming her position following Sophia's run the year before. Amelia stayed firmly in third, and Sophia, Isabella and Ava rounded out a solid top six. The real story was further down in the top 20—Eleanor and Lucy both climbed meaningfully, reflecting parents' growing appetite for names that feel timeless and substantial without sitting at the very top of every national list.

1. Charlotte

2. Olivia

3. Amelia

4. Sophia

5. Isabella

6. Ava

7. Lucy

8. Eleanor

9. Emma

10. Nora

Babylist Babes top 10 boy names

The unshakable six we mentioned in our boy names article persists! Noah, Oliver and Henry dominated the top spots on Babylist Babes in 2025, with Theodore and Liam close behind. Luca and Leo both held strong, edging out their more traditional counterpart Lucas—parents gravitated toward the shorter, sleeker versions, and the SSA data suggests the rest of the country is catching up. Elijah cracked the top 10 for the first time, knocking Ezra out after its long run—proof that names with soft sounds are having a real moment.

1. Noah

2. Oliver 

3. Henry

4. Theodore

5. Liam

6. Jack

7. James

8. Luca

9. Leo

10. Elijah

How Names Shifted from 2024 to 2025

Names that rose in rank

Some names didn't just hold steady in 2025—they climbed. Across both the SSA list and Babylist Babes, a few clear patterns emerged: globally rooted names gained ground, vintage-substantial picks moved up, and shorter, sleeker versions of classic names continued to outpace their traditional counterparts.

On the girls' side, Isabella, Eleanor, Lucy and Nora all showed upward momentum—names that feel timeless and substantial without sitting at the very top of every list. Eliana was the biggest national mover, jumping eight spots on the SSA list. On the boys' side, Mateo and Elijah were the standout climbers across both datasets, and Luca continued to outpace Lucas as parents gravitated toward the shorter version.

Names that cooled off

Not every 2024 favorite carried its momentum into 2025. The name Ellie fell after several years near the very top of the Babylist Babes list—its sweet nickname energy gave way to the more formal Eleanor, which climbed a few spots on both Babylist Babes and the SSA list. 

On the boys' side, Ezra and Owen remained solidly popular but lost their top 10 status on Babylist Babes, making room for the surge of Theodore and Elijah. Levi and Everett also cooled slightly after years of being in the SSA’s top 20—neither is fading, just settling into a steadier pace. If you love either of them, now might actually be a good time to use one (since it’s not everywhere).

The Babylist Crystal Ball: Why Our Data Hits Different

The Top 10 of any year tells you what parents chose, but our weekly lists give us a more real-time indication of what names are trending. Because Babylist Babes captures names as they happen, we’re able to see the "vibe shifts" months or even years before they hit the national census.

When a name begins to trend on Babylist, it’s usually a signal of a larger shift in parent intuition. Whether it’s a move toward "Mini-Maximalism" or a sudden surge in "Celestial Surnames," our 2026 data is already surfacing the names that will define the next decade.