Baby names of 1986

Jessica and Michael topped the lists in 1986, out of 3,557,062 births recorded across 18,803 different names. That is 0.3% fewer than the 1985 files hold. About 3.4 million of them are alive today.

← 1985 All years 1987 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Jessica	52,682
2	Ashley	49,671
3	Amanda	40,532
4	Jennifer	36,187
5	Sarah	28,163
6	Stephanie	22,651
7	Nicole	21,292
8	Brittany	20,313
9	Heather	19,790
10	Elizabeth	19,074
11	Megan	18,590
12	Melissa	17,667
13	Amber	16,954
14	Lauren	16,684
15	Rachel	15,455
16	Danielle	14,942
17	Tiffany	14,483
18	Kimberly	14,420
19	Christina	14,384
20	Laura	14,172
21	Samantha	14,092
22	Amy	13,452
23	Michelle	13,303
24	Emily	13,236
25	Crystal	12,689

All 200 girls’ names of 1986 (12,836 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Michael	64,235
2	Christopher	56,693
3	Matthew	46,929
4	Joshua	37,542
5	David	37,150
6	Daniel	36,573
7	James	34,057
8	Andrew	33,858
9	Robert	31,350
10	John	30,209
11	Ryan	29,524
12	Joseph	28,834
13	Brandon	27,254
14	Justin	26,638
15	William	24,333
16	Jonathan	23,973
17	Nicholas	22,800
18	Jason	22,415
19	Anthony	21,956
20	Brian	21,027
21	Kevin	19,935
22	Eric	19,528
23	Kyle	19,315
24	Adam	18,157
25	Steven	18,099

All 200 boys’ names of 1986 (7,830 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1985:

Kyrie #10,677 → #958 +9,719
Sable #5,678 → #900 +4,778
Eliana #2,484 → #450 +2,034
Shatara #2,484 → #987 +1,497
Cherrelle #2,253 → #879 +1,374
Jerrica #1,760 → #837 +923
Madelyn #1,740 → #845 +895
Nakita #1,536 → #683 +853

Kyrie is here because the girls’ 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.

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1985:

Spenser #2,226 → #947 +1,279
Jayce #1,614 → #694 +920
Addison #1,228 → #514 +714
Payton #1,614 → #965 +649
Cordell #1,181 → #608 +573
Yaakov #1,268 → #848 +420
Garrison #1,321 → #937 +384
Dakota #866 → #488 +378

Addison and Payton are here because the boys’ file records them: 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 1986, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1986:

Myleka 38
Chetara 26
Elyana 23
Aasha 20
Cayleigh 16
Fiorela 16
Khandice 14
Birttany 14
Martika 13
Shaquenta 13

First recorded in 1986, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1986:

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.