The 100 Most Popular Baby Names from the ’80s

Tiffany, Michael, Heather, Josh, and Jessica (or something like that).
Tiffany, Michael, Heather, Josh, and Jessica (or something like that). | (Silhouettes) MauraHouston/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images; (Background) filo/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images

These days, hospital nurseries in the U.S. are full of Olivias and Olivers, Emmas and Liams. But back in the 1980s, it was all about Jessica and Joshua and Jennifer and Christopher.

The Social Security Administration issued Social Security Numbers to 469,520 Jessicas born in the 1980s, making it the most popular baby girl name of the whole decade. Michael took the blue ribbon on the boys’ side with a final count of 663,844. Behind it was Christopher at nearly 555,000, with Matthew, Joshua, and David rounding out the top five. For girls, Jessica was followed by Jennifer, Amanda, Ashley, and Sarah.

It’s worth mentioning that the SSA logs each variant spelling of a name as its own entry. Some names would’ve ranked significantly higher if that weren’t the case. There were 272,636 Sarahs, for example, but there were also 104,675 Saras. If you add those two figures, Sarah/Sara would climb from third to fifth place. Other pairs to make the top 50 include Steven (25th) and Stephen (36th); Lindsey (42nd) and Lindsay (44th); and Kristen (38th) and Kristin (43rd).

Of the top 10 baby boy names from the SSA’s most recent ranking—which is from 2021—three are also in the top 50 from the 1980s: James, William, and Benjamin. On the girls’ side, meanwhile, not a single name from 2021’s top 10 also appears on the 1980s list. The letter y as a name-ending trend—Tiffany, Brittany, Amy, Kimberly, Ashley, etc.—has been supplanted by a. None of 2021’s top 10 end in y; seven end in a, from Olivia and Emma to Isabella and Mia.

How many ’80s babies do you know with the names below?

Rank

Male

Female

1.

Michael

Jessica

2.

Christopher

Jennifer

3.

Matthew

Amanda

4.

Joshua

Ashley

5.

David

Sarah

6.

James

Stephanie

7.

Daniel

Melissa

8.

Robert

Nicole

9.

John

Elizabeth

10.

Joseph

Heather

11.

Jason

Tiffany

12.

Justin

Michelle

13.

Andrew

Amber

14.

Ryan

Megan

15.

William

Amy

16.

Brian

Rachel

17.

Brandon

Kimberly

18.

Jonathan

Christina

19.

Nicholas

Lauren

20.

Anthony

Crystal

21.

Eric

Brittany

22.

Adam

Rebecca

23.

Kevin

Laura

24.

Thomas

Danielle

25.

Steven

Emily

26.

Timothy

Samantha

27.

Richard

Angela

28.

Jeremy

Erin

29.

Jeffrey

Kelly

30.

Kyle

Sara

31.

Benjamin

Lisa

32.

Aaron

Katherine

33.

Charles

Andrea

34.

Mark

Jamie

35.

Jacob

Mary

36.

Stephen

Erica

37.

Patrick

Courtney

38.

Scott

Kristen

39.

Nathan

Shannon

40.

Paul

April

41.

Sean

Katie

42.

Travis

Lindsey

43.

Zachary

Kristin

44.

Dustin

Lindsay

45.

Gregory

Christine

46.

Kenneth

Alicia

47.

Jose

Maria

48.

Tyler

Vanessa

49.

Jesse

Kathryn

50.

Alexander

Allison