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Names move in waves. A celebrity baby announcement, a hit show, a viral pop song, a presidential election — any of these can lift a name fifty ranks in a single year. Others fade just as quickly, often without an obvious cause: a once-fashionable name simply starts to feel dated, and a generation of parents quietly looks elsewhere. The two columns below show the year's biggest movers in both directions, computed from the most recent five years of US SSA rank data.

What we watch for: a name that has gained more than fifty ranks year-over-year (a real signal, not noise); a name that has held a top-100 spot for several years before suddenly slipping (often the start of a longer fade); and the steady climbers that have moved up every single year for five years in a row, which is the closest thing to a guarantee in baby-naming. Click any name to see its full chart, meaning, and cultural context.