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Summary

Gender-Neutral Baby Names Are On The Rise & You Won't Find 'Sarah' Or 'Josh' On This List

Are you going with a gender-neutral name? 👶

A pregnant woman writing baby names down.

A pregnant woman writing baby names down.

Prostockstudio | Dreamstime
Senior Writer

If you're trying to come up with a unique name for your baby and you also want it to be gender-neutral, you're certainly not alone.

New data released by software company BeenVerified shows that gender-neutral baby names are not only on the rise but at an all-time high, meaning you won't find common names from the 90s like Sarah, Emily, Josh or Nick on the list.

BeenVerified says it looked at baby name records from the U.S. Social Security Administration dating back to 1880 as part of its research.

It found that gender-neutral names have been slowly getting more popular since the 1960s to an "all-time high this year" at nearly 15% of given birth names in the U.S.

In its findings, BeenVerified notes that few names are "truly gender neutral," which they describe as a name that is evenly split between boys and girls.

It ranked the names by how closely the names saw a "50-50 split between boys and girls in 2022."

The name Robin came out on top. The company says 100 years ago the name was mostly male, but became primarily a female name over time. Now the name is split.

Of the 637 children named Robin last year in the U.S., 50.4% were girls and 49.6% boys, according to BeenVerified.

However, it looks like Charlie was the most popular baby name in the top 10 most gender-neutral names in 2022.

The software company says more than 4,400 boys and girls took the name last year.

Here are BeenVerified's top 20 gender-neutral baby names of 2022:

  1. Robin
  2. Justice
  3. Bellamy
  4. Blake
  5. Tatum
  6. Charlie
  7. Azariah
  8. Finley
  9. Armani
  10. Jamie
  11. Ocean
  12. Rory
  13. Dakota
  14. Alexis
  15. Phoenix
  16. Emerson
  17. Skyler
  18. Layne
  19. Ari
  20. Chandler
BeenVerified also released a list of the top 20 gender-neutral baby names over the past 100 years.

In its findings, the company says no name was "truly gender-neutral," but the name that came closest to it was the name Kerry, which was split as 49.4% girls and 50.6% boys.

These are BeenVerified's top 20 gender-neutral baby names between 1923-2022:

  1. Kerry
  2. Emerson
  3. Jessie
  4. Jackie
  5. Harley
  6. Quinn
  7. Riley
  8. Jaime
  9. Frankie
  10. Casey
  11. Skyler
  12. Peyton
  13. Pat
  14. Jody
  15. Kendall
  16. Rowan
  17. Johnnie
  18. Marion
  19. Dominique
  20. Reese

This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.

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      Asymina Kantorowicz (she/her) was a Senior Writer for Narcity Media. She has worked at Yahoo Canada, CTV News Vancouver Island, CTV News Channel, and CHCH News. Over the past eight years, she took on various newsroom roles and helped produce award-winning newscasts. Loving the fast-paced environment of any newsroom, she helped cover stories like the 2016 royal visit to Victoria, the 2019 B.C. manhunt, and provincial elections. She had an MA in journalism and a BA in media from Western University. She moved from Toronto to Victoria a few years ago and loved being close to the ocean.

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