Most Popular Baby Girl Names in the US for 2024 (SSA) and Their Meanings

For the girls born in the United States in 2024, the most popular name was once again Olivia, given to 14,772 babies. Emma (13,524) and Amelia (12,786) came next. The figures come from the Social Security Administration's (SSA) "Popular Baby Names" list, which is based on Social Security card applications for babies born in the US and covers the whole country.

Lists like this tend to be read like a leaderboard: who moved up, who slipped? With SSA data, though, it is easy to misread the rankings. Below you will find the top 30 girls' names of 2024 with their meanings and Abjad values, then three keys for reading the list correctly, and finally a look at the names in Arabic letters.

The top 30 girls' names of 2024

The Arabic spelling in the table is the established Arabic-script form of each name, or the one closest to its sound; the Abjad value is calculated from that spelling. Until a name written in Latin letters has an Arabic spelling, it has no single "definitive" Abjad value.

Together, the top 30 names were given to 243,980 baby girls, compared with 242,384 for the top 30 in 2023. The top 100 add up to 502,026, which is 5,832 more than the 2023 top 100.

Key one: a lower rank does not mean fewer babies

Three pairs swapped places in the top 10 (Amelia–Charlotte, Mia–Sophia, Evelyn–Ava), and none of these moves on its own means a name is falling out of favor. Charlotte slipped from No. 3 to No. 4, yet only 41 fewer babies were given the name (12,638 → 12,597). The real story is Amelia: 421 more babies were named Amelia, enough to pull ahead. The gap between the two is just 189 babies.

The same thing happened at No. 5. Mia passed Sophia with 745 more babies, even though Sophia also grew by 127. In 2024 the two were separated by only 23 babies. Evelyn, meanwhile, rose from No. 9 to No. 8 with just 25 more babies, because 1,037 fewer babies were named Ava, the biggest drop in the top 30.

It works the same way at the very top: 557 fewer babies were named Olivia than in 2023, yet its lead over Emma is still 1,248. In the 2021–2024 data we have, Olivia is No. 1 every year. Within the top 30, 13 names were given to fewer babies than in 2023 and 17 to more.

Key two: the SSA counts every spelling separately

The list includes both Sophia (No. 6) and Sofia (No. 10). The SSA treats the two spellings as different names. So what if we added them together? The total below is not an SSA figure, just our own small experiment:

Combined, the two spellings beat Olivia by 5,467 babies in 2024, up from a margin of 4,335 in 2023. In other words, the official No. 1 and the name you hear most on the playground may not be the same. Sofia also climbed from No. 12 in 2023 to No. 10 in 2024, the only newcomer to the top 10; Luna was the name that dropped out.

Another sound family stands out, too: five names in the top 30 begin with "El-": Eleanor, Elizabeth, Eliana, Ellie and Ella. Their roots differ (Elizabeth is Hebrew, Eliana has Hebrew among its roots, and Eleanor goes back to the Occitan Alienòr), but together they were given to 32,550 baby girls, compared with 30,380 in 2023.

Switch to Arabic letters and something interesting happens: the "ph" versus "f" difference that separates Sophia from Sofia disappears. Both are written صوفيا, and both have an Abjad value of 187.

Key three: look at the trend line, not a single year

Within the top 30, the fastest climber from 2023 to 2024 was Eliana, which jumped from No. 34 to No. 18 as 1,090 more babies were given the name: the biggest gain in the top 30, both in rank and in numbers. In numbers, Aurora came next (No. 22 → No. 16, 874 more babies); in rank, the second-biggest jump was Zoe's (No. 36 → No. 29). Eliana, Zoe and Ella are the three names that entered the top 30 in 2024.

Step back a few years and some of these climbs turn out to be more than a one-year jump. Violet was No. 36 in 2021 and No. 15 in 2024. Over the same stretch, Aurora rose from No. 35 to No. 16 and Eliana from No. 47 to No. 18. All three ranked higher every single year from 2021 to 2024.

Within the top 30, the sharpest move in the other direction was Scarlett, down from No. 17 to No. 27, with 406 fewer babies given the name. Emily slipped from No. 19 to No. 25. Mila, Avery and Layla left the top 30 in 2024, though all three are still in the top 100.

Six names joined the top 100 this year: Ayla, Daisy, Millie, Josie, Melody and Lucia, while Brooklyn, Gabriella, Savannah, Cora, Natalia and Ariana dropped out. The one with the most interesting backstory is probably Ayla, at No. 69 with 3,253 babies. It was No. 98 in 2022 and outside the top 100 in 2023. The American Ayla and the Turkish name Ayla, meaning "halo of the moon, moonlight", come from different sources, though: Behind the Name traces the name's US popularity to Jean M. Auel's 1980 novel.

Looking at the list through Abjad

In Abjad, every Arabic letter has a numerical value, and a name's value is the sum of the letters in its Arabic spelling. For names of Western origin that spelling is usually built from the sound, so the same name can be written in more than one way, and its value can change.

• Elements of the first letters: Of the top 10 names, 8 begin with a letter from the fire group and 2 with one from the air group. Most of that comes down to spelling: names that start with a vowel are written with an alif (ا) in Arabic, and 6 of the top 10 begin with alif, which the traditional classification counts as a fire letter (some authors use a different classification). The other two fire names are Charlotte (ش) and Mia (م), while Sophia and Sofia start with the air letter ص.
• Highest and lowest: The highest value in the top 30 belongs to Charlotte: شارلوت = 937. Most of that value comes from two letters, ش (300) and ت (400). Scarlett (سكارليت) comes second with 721. The lowest value is Zoe's: زوي = 23.
• Shared values: Sophia and Sofia are both 187; Emma (إيما) and Hazel (هيزل) are 52; Mia (ميا) and Ellie (إيلي) are 51. Ella (إيلا), No. 30 on the list, and newcomer Ayla (أيلا) share a value too: 42.
• When the spelling changes: If the final sound of Elizabeth is written with ث, the name adds up to 561; with ت, it is 461. Ella written إلا becomes 32, and Luna written لونة becomes 91. Lily's spelling ليلي and the spelling of the name Layla, ليلى, give the same value: 80. No spelling is "luckier" than another; what matters is deciding consciously how the name will be written in your family.

These numbers are interesting, but on their own they are not a name analysis. In the tradition, a name is considered together with the family: how the baby's name relates to the mother's and father's names, the element balance of the letters, and the star chart (yildizname) sign calculated with the mother's name. A name can sit at the top of the chart; whether it suits your family is another question.

Final word

The lesson of the 2024 list, in short: a name's rank depends not only on its own count but on its neighbors'; counting spellings separately can change the picture; and the real trend only shows up over several years. The SSA has also published its 2025 list; this article focuses on the 2024 data.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA), Popular Baby Names — names of babies born in the US, based on Social Security card applications. The figures are the values published by the SSA as of October 2026; because the SSA republishes past years every year, small differences may appear.

Note: This article is for information only. Abjad and letter elements are a traditional interpretive framework; no claim is made that a name determines anything definite about a person's life.