Emily led every other girl’s name of the 2000s with 223,768 births. Add up the decade’s top ten and the total passes 1.6 million girls, enough to make a repeated first name on a school roster almost a given.
The Social Security Administration keeps decade-by-decade lists built from Social Security card applications, and its 2000s list for girls reads like a yearbook index. One name on it, Ashley, had been No. 2 in the 1990s and slid to No. 10, a drop of more than half, while Hannah and Olivia ended up separated by a mere 270 births.
The Ten Names, Ranked by Births
Here is the full top 10 from the SSA’s list of top names of the 2000s, drawn from a universe of 20,323,585 girl births. The agency describes the data as a 100 percent sample based on Social Security card applications, current as of March 2026. The boys’ side of the decade has its own story, told in Jacob beat Michael by 23,362 baby boys in the 2000s as Emily led the girls with 223,768, and anyone who sat through those school years may enjoy the little rituals from the 80s and 90s that disappeared without much notice.
1. Emily, 223,768. The decade’s runaway leader accounts for about 1.1 percent of all girls born in those ten years. Names have long taken turns at the top, as laid out in 5 names that shared the girls’ No. 1 spot across 6 decades.
2. Madison, 193,222. Second place sits about 30,000 births behind Emily, a wide gap by the standards of this list.
3. Emma, 181,414. Emma made the top three with room to spare, about 25,000 births ahead of Olivia. While Emily led the girls, the boys’ chart had its own long-running champion, covered in Michael topped the boys’ chart for 4 straight decades, and the era’s story-hour favorites are collected in the best kids movies based on books.
4. Olivia, 156,054. Olivia edged Hannah for fourth. For the soundtrack to those years, there is the 15 most influential songs of all time.
5. Hannah, 155,784. Just 270 births behind Olivia, one of the tightest margins on the whole list.
6. Abigail, 150,926. Abigail sits in the middle of a tightly packed pack, with Isabella less than 1,400 births behind. A different era’s favorites appear in the 10 most popular baby names of 1976.
7. Isabella, 149,571. Hannah, Abigail and Isabella all sit within about 6,200 births of one another. Some customs outlast names, as odd American traditions that confuse the rest of the world shows.
8. Samantha, 134,313. Samantha ranked fifth in the 1990s with 224,023 births, so its decade-over-decade total fell by about 40 percent.
9. Elizabeth, 133,568. Elizabeth held a spot on both decades’ lists, though it moved from 172,693 in the 1990s to 133,568 here.
10. Ashley, 133,051. Ashley finished only 517 births behind Elizabeth. In the 1990s it had 301,820 births, second only to Jessica’s 303,136.
How the 2000s Compare With the 1990s
Jessica, Ashley and Emily topped the 1990s list, per the SSA’s top names of the 1990s. Emily climbed from third to first even though its total slipped from 237,262 to 223,768, a sign of how the whole girls’ field spread out over the decade. Four names, Emily, Ashley, Samantha and Elizabeth, appear on both top-10 lists.
Why a Top 10 Still Feels So Spread Out
The ten leaders together covered roughly 8 percent of girl births in the 2000s, which means more than nine in ten girls carried a name outside this list. That is part of why the top 10 feels so familiar and yet so spread out: a name could be everywhere without being on a majority of birth certificates.
HuffPost’s 2018 look at the same list, written by Caroline Bologna, noted that Emily, the decade’s champion, had since dropped out of the top 10, and presented the ranking as a snapshot of the decade rather than a forecast.
For anyone who sat in those classrooms, the list works as a roll call: the Emilys, Madisons and Emmas, plus the Ashleys, who had already been everywhere in the decade before.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Ente75 – Public domain/Wikimedia Commons
