Which regions does this use?

The four US Census Bureau regions: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West, with the District of Columbia grouped in the South as the Census Bureau does.

Does a high share mean the name is common in that region?

No, and this is the most common misreading. The share is the portion of that name's national births coming from the region, not the portion of that region's births using the name. It tells you where the people with that name are, not how common it is locally.

Why is the South always the largest share?

Because it is the largest region by births. The average top-100 name draws 40.9% of its births from the South, so that figure is the neutral result rather than evidence of a Southern preference.

Which US Baby Names Are Regional and Which Are Everywhere

Updated 2026-08-05

Naming looks national and behaves regionally. Using the SSA state file we can measure how concentrated each name is, but the measurement needs a baseline first, because the regions are not the same size.

The baseline nobody mentions

The census South is the largest of the four regions, so an average name already draws 40.9% of its births there. Northeast averages 16.3%, Midwest 20.0%, and West 22.7%.

This matters because a headline like "this name is 40% Southern" sounds regional and is actually below average. Concentration only means something measured against these numbers.

The most concentrated names

Name	Region	Share of its births
Jase	South	60.8%
Caroline	South	56.4%
Ashley	South	56.4%
Khloe	South	56.3%
Mary	South	54.4%
Aubree	South	53.2%
Kimberly	South	52.1%
Waylon	South	51.7%

Against a South baseline of 40.9%.

The most evenly spread

At the other end, the flattest names in the top 100 sit near or below the regional baseline everywhere, which is a different kind of unusual: they are common without being local.

Name	Largest region	Share there
Maeve	Northeast	28.5%
Quinn	Midwest	30.0%
Leo	South	30.3%
Paige	South	31.1%
Max	South	31.3%
Brooke	South	31.3%

Why regional concentration is partly an artifact

A rarer name will always look more regional than a common one, and not because parents in one region prefer it. SSA withholds any name with fewer than 5 occurrences in a state and year. A name with a few hundred births nationally therefore disappears from the states where it is thinnest, and the states left standing are the ones where it happened to be a little more common.

We report how many jurisdictions have a figure for each name so this stays visible. When a name appears in twenty states rather than fifty, treat its regional profile as a lower bound on how spread out it really is.

The cleanest way to avoid the trap is to compare names of similar national size. Two names with comparable birth totals are subject to the same threshold effect, so a difference in their regional profiles is real. Comparing a top-ten name against a rank-90 name will tell you mostly about the threshold.

What drives the pattern

Three forces show up repeatedly in this data, and they are worth separating because they look identical in a single year's table.

The first is community composition. Names common in a specific linguistic or religious community concentrate wherever that community is largest, and the map follows settlement history rather than current fashion. These profiles are stable across decades.

The second is diffusion in progress. A name genuinely spreading will show a moving centre: high concentration in one region that falls year over year as other regions pick it up. Concentration here is a snapshot of an ongoing process, not a property of the name.

The third is regional persistence of an older fashion. A name that peaked nationally twenty years ago often holds on longest in the region where it started, so a declining name drifts toward looking regional even though nothing about its geography changed.

Telling them apart needs the time series rather than the current year, which is why each name page shows the full rank history alongside the regional split.

The regions are not natural units

Everything above uses the four census regions because that is the standard division and it makes our numbers comparable to other work. It is worth being honest that they are administrative groupings rather than cultural ones.

The South as defined here runs from Delaware to Texas and contains communities with very little in common naming-wise. The West contains both the Pacific coast and the Mountain states, which frequently diverge. So a name reported as concentrated in one region may actually be concentrated in a few adjacent states that happen to fall inside it, and the regional label is coarser than the underlying pattern.

When a name's profile looks surprising, the fix is to read its top states directly rather than the regional summary. Every name page lists both, and the state list is the finer instrument. The regional figures are there because they compress fifty numbers into four without being wrong, not because four is the right number.

How to use this when choosing a name

If you want a name that will feel unremarkable wherever your child ends up, look for a flat regional profile and a high state count. Those names are common enough to be recognised and spread evenly enough that they will not read as a marker of where you are from.

If you would rather the name carry a local connection, the concentrated end of the table is where to look, with the caveat that concentration and rarity are entangled. Check the state count first: a concentrated name present in forty states is genuinely a regional favourite, while one present in twenty is mostly just uncommon.

Frequently asked questions

Which regions does this use?: The four US Census Bureau regions: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West, with the District of Columbia grouped in the South as the Census Bureau does.
Does a high share mean the name is common in that region?: No, and this is the most common misreading. The share is the portion of that name's national births coming from the region, not the portion of that region's births using the name. It tells you where the people with that name are, not how common it is locally.
Why is the South always the largest share?: Because it is the largest region by births. The average top-100 name draws 40.9% of its births from the South, so that figure is the neutral result rather than evidence of a Southern preference.