Social Security Administration data from 2020 through 2025 shows that while names like Olivia and Liam lead national rankings, dozens of other names achieved high popularity in only a single state or the District of Columbia. The analysis, conducted by Nexstar, identified specific naming trends that deviate from the national top 100 list. According to the data, 23 states and D.C. had at least one girl’s name that trended exclusively in that jurisdiction, while 21 states and D.C. saw a similar pattern for boy names.
Nationwide, Olivia and Liam have remained the most common names for seven consecutive years through 2025. Other consistently high-ranking names since 2020 include Charlotte and Emma for girls, and Noah and Oliver for boys. These national leaders held the top spot in 47 states, with only Hawaii, Mississippi, and Wyoming reporting different names at the absolute top of their 2025 charts.
The Nexstar analysis highlighted names that reached state-level popularity without cracking the national top 100. For example, the name Declan was among the top 100 boy names in 38 states at least once between 2020 and 2025, despite its highest national ranking being No. 102. Similarly, Parker reached the top 100 for girls in 36 states while peaking at No. 106 nationally. Hawaii recorded the highest number of unique trending names, including 22 that have never appeared on the national popularity lists.
On a concrete day-to-day level, these regional preferences mean that students and teachers in specific states will encounter different naming conventions in classrooms and on legal documents. In Wyoming, a child named Lottie, a name that returned to the national list in 2022 after a 63-year absence, would be common locally but rare elsewhere, ranking 528th nationally. Families will notice these trends when receiving newly printed Social Security cards or when registering for state-level health and education benefits, where regional outliers like Bjorn in Alaska or Javier in Arizona appear more frequently than in the rest of the country.
The knock-on effects of these trends influence the commercial markets for personalized children's products and help government agencies predict cultural shifts in different regions. Some localized names eventually transition to national trends; for instance, Milan spiked in Florida before reaching the national top 300 in 2023. The Social Security Administration typically releases the full dataset for each calendar year in the following year, meaning the 2026 naming data will likely be available in 2027. Under current reporting standards, these names will continue to be documented on federal birth records and Social Security applications as they occur.