Why Spelling Variants Split a Baby Name's Popularity Rank in U.S. Data

The U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) ranks every baby name spelling separately from the exact letter sequence recorded on Social Security card applications, without combining phonetic equivalents. In the 2025 U.S. national girl rankings, Sophia ranks #5 and Sofia ranks #9—placing two spellings of the same spoken name inside the national top 10 at the same time. In New Mexico’s 2025 top five girl names, the two spellings sit side by side at #3 (Sophia) and #4 (Sofia), right behind Mia (#1) and Olivia (#2).

Parents checking a baby-name ranking table are usually weighing two distinct questions: how often their child will hear the same spoken name in a classroom, and how often their child will have to spell a specific written form aloud. Because the official SSA tabulation rules merge hyphens and spaces while keeping single-letter variations apart, reading one spelling’s rank in isolation can make a familiar spoken name look much rarer than it is in everyday life.

What the Official SSA Card-Application Rules Merge and Split

According to the SSA Background Information for Popular Names (compiled from a 100% sample of Social Security card applications as of March 2026 for U.S. births after 1879), the agency tabulates the First Name field verbatim with one punctuation exception. Hyphens and spaces are stripped before counting, so Julie-Anne, Julie Anne, and Julieanne collapse into a single row. Any change in letters, however, creates a separate entry with its own rank: SSA explicitly notes that Caitlin, Caitlyn, Kaitlin, Kaitlyn, Kaitlynn, Katelyn, and Katelynn are ranked individually.

Boys and girls are ranked in separate tables, and exact birth-count ties in a given year are broken in alphabetical order. To protect privacy, SSA excludes any spelling with fewer than five occurrences in a geographic area for a birth year; as a result, the sum of a rarer spelling’s state counts is often smaller than its national total.

Three Ways Spelling Splits Appear in the 2024 and 2025 Rankings

Depending on how parents divide between two spellings, a variant pair can sit together at the top of the table, split evenly in the middle of the list, or diverge by hundreds of positions in the SSA 2024–2025 popularity tables:

Spelling variety also contributes to the broader gap between boys’ and girls’ top-name concentration reported on SSA’s coverage page: in 2025, the top 1,000 boy names covered 75.59% of male births, while the top 1,000 girl names covered 67.25% of female births (71.51% overall). Because girls’ births are spread across more distinct entries and spelling variants, even top-ten girl names represent a smaller share of all births than their rank alone implies (see Olivia Kept First Place. Charlotte Nearly Closed the Gap. and How to Read Baby-Name Trends by Decade: Rank, Count and Share).

Using Both Exact Rank and Variant Context on Your Shortlist

Combining two spellings into a homemade "true rank" can mislead you in the opposite direction: the SSA publishes no combined ranking, two similar spellings do not always share the same cultural history or pronunciation in every family, and no single pair is an exhaustive list of every related name. If you are deciding between Lillian (#57) and Lilian (#560), or between Elliot (#151) and Elliott (#160), keep the two questions separate. Use the exact-spelling rank to see which written form is currently standard on forms, and check sibling spellings alongside it so a #560 rank does not surprise you when the spoken name is already familiar on the playground.

Name Scout lets you explore official U.S. SSA birth records from 1910 through 2025 by exact spelling, compare two spellings side by side, check state-level popularity, and match favorites with your partner. Try Name Scout in your browser, Download Name Scout for iPhone, or Get Name Scout on Android.