The most popular baby names for 2021 are out, but rather than giving you another top 10 list, we’ve created four interactive visualisations to explore all the data since 1954.

Visualisations like these enable you to see long-term trends and search for any name that has ever cracked the top 100, for boys or girls. The first two visualisations are a race for the top 20 names. You can click replay and watch these unfold over time to see how patterns have changed.

Once the visualisation has finished playing, hover on any of the top 20 names to see how they have risen.

You’ll see the visualisation for girl names is busier than boy names – that’s because 415 names have cracked the top 100 since 1954 for girls, compared to 332 for boys.

Line chart races (what data geeks call the above charts) are cool and gimmicky, but they hide lots of insight and do not allow you to explore data by individual names. The following visualisations allow you to search for any name that has ever made the top 100.

While the charts above showed ranks, these show a score – presumably the number of babies given that name. The score is higher for names in the 50s and 60s, probably due to more diversity of names now. Meaning the name Karen, for example, was four times as popular in the 50s as Charlotte is today, despite both being the top name.

Explore trends for all 747 names that have made it top 100 since 1954 below.