Baby names of 2000

Emily and Jacob topped the lists in 2000, out of 3,780,037 births recorded across 27,521 different names. That is 2.3% more than the 1999 files hold. About 3.7 million of them are alive today.

← 1999 All years 2001 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Emily	25,959
2	Hannah	23,087
3	Madison	19,968
4	Ashley	18,000
5	Sarah	17,715
6	Alexis	17,631
7	Samantha	17,265
8	Jessica	15,711
9	Elizabeth	15,117
10	Taylor	15,080
11	Lauren	14,176
12	Alyssa	13,553
13	Kayla	13,313
14	Abigail	13,094
15	Brianna	12,880
16	Olivia	12,855
17	Emma	12,560
18	Megan	11,436
19	Grace	11,285
20	Victoria	10,926
21	Rachel	10,687
22	Anna	10,613
23	Sydney	10,243
24	Destiny	9,850
25	Morgan	9,502

All 200 girls’ names of 2000 (17,660 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Jacob	34,492
2	Michael	32,045
3	Matthew	28,580
4	Joshua	27,543
5	Christopher	24,936
6	Nicholas	24,653
7	Andrew	23,658
8	Joseph	22,844
9	Daniel	22,338
10	Tyler	21,506
11	William	20,669
12	Brandon	20,337
13	Ryan	20,269
14	John	20,115
15	Zachary	19,852
16	David	19,787
17	Anthony	19,656
18	James	17,991
19	Justin	17,784
20	Alexander	17,290
21	Jonathan	16,888
22	Christian	16,059
23	Austin	15,947
24	Dylan	15,405
25	Ethan	15,226

All 200 boys’ names of 2000 (12,119 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1999:

Laisha #3,509 → #981 +2,528
Litzy #2,527 → #396 +2,131
Cielo #2,991 → #895 +2,096
Yamilet #2,703 → #839 +1,864
Nyah #2,567 → #792 +1,775
Brisa #1,596 → #482 +1,114
Monserrat #1,844 → #860 +984
Dariana #1,804 → #837 +967

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1999:

Maximus #5,656 → #850 +4,806
Elian #3,376 → #426 +2,950
Axel #799 → #361 +438
Luca #1,063 → #626 +437
Jevon #1,039 → #636 +403
Joan #1,311 → #911 +400
Kevon #790 → #393 +397
Sabastian #1,311 → #932 +379

Joan 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 2000, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 2000:

First recorded in 2000, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 2000:

Rithik 22
Ritik 20
Lleyton 15
Fynn 14
Edgerrin 14
Zaykeese 13
Terius 13
Kaidin 12
Cadon 12
Erubiel 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.