Baby names of 1976

Jennifer and Michael topped the lists in 1976, out of 3,034,106 births recorded across 15,858 different names. That is 0.5% more than the 1975 files hold. About 2.8 million of them are alive today.

← 1975 All years 1977 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Jennifer	59,473
2	Amy	31,339
3	Melissa	25,094
4	Heather	24,192
5	Angela	22,038
6	Michelle	19,550
7	Kimberly	18,962
8	Jessica	18,368
9	Lisa	17,346
10	Amanda	15,588
11	Stephanie	15,180
12	Rebecca	14,491
13	Nicole	14,453
14	Christina	14,033
15	Sarah	13,993
16	Elizabeth	13,547
17	Shannon	13,368
18	Jamie	12,539
19	Kelly	11,791
20	Laura	11,252
21	Julie	10,839
22	Mary	10,315
23	Rachel	8,453
24	Erin	8,381
25	Andrea	8,352

All 200 girls’ names of 1976 (10,913 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Michael	66,915
2	Jason	52,643
3	Christopher	45,190
4	David	39,265
5	James	38,294
6	John	33,976
7	Robert	33,789
8	Brian	30,517
9	Matthew	29,951
10	Daniel	24,702
11	William	24,428
12	Joseph	24,055
13	Eric	21,359
14	Jeremy	20,126
15	Kevin	18,474
16	Ryan	17,484
17	Jeffrey	17,013
18	Joshua	16,845
19	Richard	16,752
20	Steven	16,650
21	Timothy	16,620
22	Anthony	16,601
23	Thomas	16,122
24	Scott	15,717
25	Mark	15,508

All 200 boys’ names of 1976 (6,495 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1975:

Rhiannon #4,141 → #593 +3,548
Mackenzie #4,370 → #837 +3,533
Khalilah #3,774 → #714 +3,060
Kenisha #2,612 → #949 +1,663
Latoria #2,411 → #956 +1,455
Jaclyn #1,807 → #537 +1,270
Farrah #1,332 → #276 +1,056
Torie #1,963 → #971 +992

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1975:

Seneca #4,309 → #803 +3,506
Jameel #2,134 → #969 +1,165
Delvin #1,658 → #946 +712
Jerimy #1,530 → #963 +567
Jamaal #1,042 → #532 +510
Jovan #1,191 → #737 +454
Tanner #1,238 → #973 +265
Buck #1,160 → #897 +263

Seneca is here because the boys’ file records it: the SSA publishes every name given to five or more babies of one sex, and a rank is a position within that list. It is not a claim about whose name it is.

First recorded in 1976, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1976:

Tynisa 79
Rhianna 56
Naimah 42
Sujey 35
Tennile 32
Rhiana 32
Aesha 28
Huong 26
Rheanna 24
Nonya 21

First recorded in 1976, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1976:

Delvecchio 27
Rasean 18
Zakee 18
Salathiel 14
Tarell 13
Chevy 13
Tri 13
Thanh 12
Abdiel 12
Bashir 12

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration national baby-name files. Names given to fewer than five babies in a year are not published, so the totals here run below the true number of births. How far below is not the same in every year: the files hold 201,484 births for 1880 and 3,315,343 for 2025, so a change from one year to the next in the early decades is partly a change in what the record covers.