Baby names of 1979

Jennifer and Michael topped the lists in 1979, out of 3,326,804 births recorded across 17,349 different names. That is 4.8% more than the 1978 files hold. About 3.1 million of them are alive today.

← 1978 All years 1980 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Jennifer	56,712
2	Melissa	34,050
3	Amanda	31,924
4	Jessica	27,780
5	Amy	21,609
6	Sarah	21,015
7	Heather	20,834
8	Angela	20,256
9	Nicole	19,510
10	Michelle	19,266
11	Elizabeth	18,073
12	Kimberly	17,635
13	Lisa	17,286
14	Christina	16,454
15	Stephanie	16,204
16	Kelly	15,296
17	Rebecca	14,548
18	Crystal	13,467
19	Jamie	12,156
20	Laura	11,880
21	Erin	11,259
22	Amber	11,079
23	April	10,902
24	Mary	10,555
25	Shannon	10,370

All 200 girls’ names of 1979 (11,972 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Michael	67,713
2	Christopher	50,659
3	Jason	50,369
4	David	42,053
5	James	39,351
6	Matthew	35,621
7	John	35,410
8	Robert	34,015
9	Joshua	31,120
10	Brian	28,659
11	Joseph	28,654
12	Daniel	28,521
13	William	24,676
14	Ryan	23,212
15	Nicholas	21,344
16	Jeremy	21,005
17	Eric	20,268
18	Timothy	19,077
19	Kevin	18,733
20	Andrew	18,618
21	Anthony	17,513
22	Justin	17,390
23	Adam	17,046
24	Jeffrey	16,865
25	Richard	16,713

All 200 boys’ names of 1979 (7,071 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1978:

Breanne #2,125 → #532 +1,593
Loni #2,516 → #989 +1,527
Renata #2,012 → #725 +1,287
Ashanti #1,862 → #877 +985
Nicolette #1,581 → #685 +896
Syreeta #1,765 → #955 +810
Maren #1,422 → #732 +690
Viviana #1,135 → #487 +648

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1978:

Tyrel #2,134 → #906 +1,228
Jace #1,186 → #715 +471
Chaz #1,371 → #984 +387
Tyrell #1,051 → #740 +311
Frederic #1,203 → #895 +308
Bryson #1,109 → #838 +271
Lars #1,087 → #842 +245
Jonah #647 → #403 +244

First recorded in 1979, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1979:

Chimere 78
Brieanna 66
Aarika 41
Chisa 37
Sulay 34
Zulay 32
Santresa 28
Kitzie 27
Amii 24
Shaherah 19

First recorded in 1979, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1979:

Jorel 22
Narada 19
Sentell 17
Tehron 17
Kiko 15
Dantonio 15
Roshad 15
Jermery 14
Dilanjan 13
Terdell 13

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.