From the moment someone receives a name, it affects who they are. For parents, the decision of naming a child should be taken seriously. From Mary to Madeline, baby names follow trends based on time period, pop culture and geographic location.

This is a topic that has been of personal interest to me, well, my entire life. The issue comes down to my given name: Jennifer. Unless you were there, it is difficult to explain the effect growing up as a Jennifer had in the 1980s and ’90s, and it’s a challenge that continues as we all progress through the workforce.

Jennifer was the most popular name for girls from 1970 to 1984. In its most popular year (1984) there were 50,563 baby girls christened Jennifer in the United States. That’s 2.8% of all girls born that year.

My father was in the Air Force, so we moved every two to four years throughout my childhood, and there was always at least one Jennifer in every grade I attended. There are positives and negatives to this. In the plus column, that means no one ever mispronounced my name, even oversees. On the other hand, it is hard to find your own identity when you are always sharing your name.

Some of those trends are changing. The most popular names in the past were given to many more children than top names used more recently. For example, during the 1980s, the decade’s most popular names were Michael and Christopher, given to 663,813 and 554,876 boys, respectively, with Jessica bestowed on 469,514 girls. (Jennifer came in fifth for the decade with 440,908.) In the 2010s, the most common names — Noah for boys and Emma for girls —were given to 183,258 boys and 194,988 girls.

The name “Olivia” has been No. 1 since 2019, and there were 15,270 girls were named that in 2023 – 0.87% of babies. This suggests while little Olivia likely will meet some name-sharing friends over her life, it will not be quite the overwhelm of the “Jennifer” craze.

Studies suggest, however, there is a fine line between a name that is too common and a name that is too unusual. People with easy-to-pronounce names are more likely to be hired for jobs, more likely to receive promotions and more likely to win political races, according to an article published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2012. Researchers reviewed results of five studies and concluded easy-to-pronounce names are judged more positively than difficult-to-pronounce names, regardless of name length, unusualness and other factors.

Beyond professional implications, a name can also bestow — or curse — a child with a sense of cultural identity and belonging. Perhaps because I grew up as “a Jennifer,” I spent a lot of time considering my children’s names before they were born.

With each of my children, we agreed on a list of potential names before the baby was born, hashing out those disagreements long before we met the baby face-to-face. I scoured lists of baby names, researching the meaning behind the name, saying the names out loud and trying to predict potential bullying.

Asking friends and family to weigh in on names also helped with pointing out potentially problematic associations with real or fictional characters. It also provided a good chance to decide whether we were ready to defend a baby’s name or handle feedback.

In 2025, parents have even more options for help in choosing baby names, with professional consultants and online forums ready to provide their opinions. A good place to look for trends is the Social Security Administration website at www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/index.html (my source for the stats listed here). The SSA tracks the top baby names for each year and name popularity over time. Want to know the most common baby names in the United States for 2024? The SSA will release that report on Mother’s Day.

The decision of a baby’s name is extremely personal and completely public, so it is difficult to give any specific advice or strategy about what to name a child. That doesn’t mean people won’t try. From the naming consults to academic research, the topic of a baby’s name is fascinating.

In 2024, a Cornell University team of eight women — all named some variety of Kate, Katie or Katherine — studied game theory of baby naming with a tongue-in-cheek article, “An Abundance of Katherines.” They concluded “overall, we find only one rule really matters when naming a child: when in doubt, name it Kate.”