Boy Names: Top 1,000 Baby Boy Names in the U.S. for 2024

If you want to check on the popularity of a name before you decide, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is the first stop. It keeps a list of the top 1,000 baby boy names every year. It also tracks data about names that are rising and falling in rank, so you can see how the use of a name has changed over time. From there, we can also see trends, which are confirmed through lists made by baby-naming sites that know which names its users are looking up and settling on more and more often.

So, what names did we see more of in 2023, and what trendy boy names do we expect to be on the rise for 2024 and beyond? When we scoured the popular naming trends for this year and next, these were the ones that rose to the top.

Most Popular Boy Names

On May 10, the SSA released its list of the most popular names of, and as of the end of 2023 these are the names used most often:

Liam
Noah
Oliver
James
Elijah
Mateo
Theodore
Henry
Lucas
William

They should look pretty familiar — they're almost all the same names from the year before. There's only one newcomer — Mateo — which vaulted to No. 6 and bumped Benjamin out of the top 10.

Trendy Boy Names

In addition to keeping track of the most-often-used names, the SSA also looks at which names took the biggest leaps in popularity. These names are rising fastest through the ranks:

Izael
Chozen
Eiden
Cassian
Kyren
Semaj
Kaizen
Kyaire
Jahmir
Jesiah
Matheo
Dereck
Mael
Elio
Chosen
Waylen
Yael
Rhodes
Jasiel
Koen

Just when you thought Star Wars couldn't drive any more baby names, along comes Cassian — as in Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna. And doesn't Kyren seem like it could be a shortening of Kylo Ren? Kylo is already No. 405 on the SSA list, a good match for Rey at No. 794. And, just in time for the 25th anniversary of The Phantom Menace, Anakin is No. 543 on the list.

diego luna visits star wars galaxy's edge at disneyland park

Handout//Getty Images

Diego Luna, who plays Cassian Andor. Cassian is the hottest new Star Wars-inspired boy name.

Speaking of combining and remixing names, a lot of names on the list of fast-climbers are really alternate spellings of more popular names. Chosen is on there, as it was last year, but the creatively spelled Chozen is higher. There's also Eiden (alternative to Aiden), Matheo (Mateo) and Dereck (Derrick).

Boy names that have decreased most in popularity, however, include Dior, Maxton, Davian, Heath, Braden, Bryant, Dion, Kase, Lux and Alaric. It seems lke the short, D-names and the longer B-names are losing their time in the spotlight.

Cute Baby Boy Names

What about the trends that are so new, they haven't shown up on the SSA list yet? "For boys, we've been moving away from the patrilineal traditionally masculine names for at least a generation, though James and William are hanging on tight and Henry is even rising through the ranks," says Pamela Redmond, CEO of Nameberry, a baby-naming site that keeps track of baby name trends. "These softer unconventional boy name trends include surnames ending in S such as Wells and Rhodes and nouveau cowboy names like Dutton and Wilder." She says that means choosing names like Kit over Christopher, Royal over Charles and Huck or Sawyer over Tom.

When Nameberry made its own list of the top names of 2024 so far, these were the most popular.

Royal
Luxury
Silas
Theodore
Arlo
Felix
August
Finn
Jude
Caspian

Nameberry also sees a rise in what it calls "old money names." These names pull together a few trends that have been rising for a bunch of years now: they're classic (and not too trendy), many of them originated as last names, and there's also a gender-neutral component, since some of the names — like Aubrey and Courtney — have also become popular as girls' names. Other old-money boys' names Nameberry has identified include Alistair, Conrad, Evelyn, Guy, Penn, Piers, Sidney and Ward.

Adjectives as Names

Royal, Loyal and Chosen — these sound like good qualities to have in a son. No wonder why they make good baby names. At the moment, Royal is No. 402 on the SSA list, Chosen is No. 671 (a big jump from last year, when it hit the list for the first time) and Loyal is No. 742.

Outdoorsy Names

Boy names are looking more and more to the great outdoors. Both Nameberry and BabyCenter, which also keeps track of the baby names its users pick, have found an uptick in names that feel at home in the wilderness, like Forest (or Forrest), River, Everest, Ocean, Reef and Woods. Maybe it's time to plan that trip you've been putting off? Or go even further: The Bump dug into its baby-name data and found a rise in space-themed names, like Orion, Apollo and Atlas.

baby boy standing in cot in top baby boy names

Image Source//Getty Images

Animal Names

What do Zooey Deschanel, Kylie Jenner, Lauren Conrad, rapper Eve and Jason Momoa all have in common? They all named their sons Wolf, though often it was a middle name (and Jenner changed her son's name to Aire). And Wolf isn't the only animal in the pack. Look for Fox, Bear, Falcon, Lynx and Tiger to show up in the future.

"Extinct" Names

Babbel went through the records and found boy names that have gone "extinct," meaning they were once in the top 100 most popular names in 1923, but now fail to make the top 1,000. If you're looking for an unusual name, these are some to consider: Arnold, Bernard, Cecil, Chester, Clarence, Clifford, Dale, Earl, Glenn, Lester, Lloyd, Milton, Norman, Ralph, Vernon, Virgil and Willard.

Gender-Agnostic Names

There's been a rise in unisex and gender-neutral names for a while now, and the trend shows no signs of stopping. But both Nameberry and BabyCenter also see that parents don't care if a name is traditionally a boys' name, a unisex name or girl's name. If they like it, they're going for it.

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BabyCenter has seen names like Tatum, Finley and Eden — usually more popular on their girls' list — rise on the boys' side. And Nameberry has seen more and more boys with "goddess names like Artemis, Echo and Nyx; nature names like Indigo, Sunny and Wren and unisex names that previously leaned female, like Blair, Laurie and Sasha."

And speaking of Artemis, call it the Percy Jackson effect, but ancient Greek-related names are showing up on the list in numbers. In addition to Apollo, you can find names like Adonis (No. 174), Ares (No. 412) and Leonidas (No. 477).