If you named your 2021 baby Noah, congratulations — they share that name with nearly 650 other children born in Illinois last year, according to new data from the Social Security Administration.
The five most popular names for 2021 male babies in the state were Noah, Liam, Oliver, Henry and Benjamin.
For female babies, the top five were Olivia, Emma, Sophia, Charlotte and Amelia.
Some names that made the top 10 list did not make the top 100 list a decade or two ago. Henry and Mateo, ranked fourth and ninth respectively in Illinois in 2021, were not on the list in 2011 or 2001.
On the other hand, some names like Jessica, Alexis and Ashley were very popular in 2001 but are much less common now.
A few names have had relatively stable rankings over the past two decades: Sophia has remained in the top three names for female babies and Alexander in the top 10 for male babies in 2001, 2011 and 2021.
You can look up names by state and territory, from 1960 to 2021, on the Social Security Administration website.
The dataset is based on a 100% sample of Social Security card applications, but it has some quirks. Names with fewer than two characters were excluded, and different spellings of phonetically similar names (e.g., Caitlin, Katelyn, and Kaitlin) are not combined. Additionally, name data are not edited; the SSA website cautions that “Unknown” and “Baby” are valid values in their dataset. Charmaine Runes is WBEZ’s data/visuals reporter. Follow her @maerunes.
