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Boys' name · 21,701 recorded births

Major

#669 in the US in 2025

Where Major stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#669boys’ names · US 2025

Major was the 669th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 407 births.

peak 2017 · 1,042188019532025

Its moment was 2017, when 1,042 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#669US rank, 2025 (boys)
407US births in 2025
#244its best US rank, in 1881
2017peak year — 1,042 births
21,673US births since 1880
28E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Major's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Major was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Major in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.02856
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Major in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 54% as a share of boys' births.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Major in New Zealand

Major never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Major in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Major was registered 28 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2023 with 7 births. It did not clear the ONS reporting floor of 3 in 2025.

2020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 3-BIRTH FLOOR0.01.32.5
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Major in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#32028
1890#33527
1900#29051
1910#38346
1920#469169
1930#498143
1940#513127
1950#586134
1960#89771
1970#94072
1980#1,12565
1990#1,42062
2000#1,89555
2010#878238
2020#349913

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Major most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

Questions about Major

How popular is the name Major?

Major ranked #669 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 407 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Major most popular?

Major peaked in 2017, when 1,042 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Major rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Major has been falling between 2016 and 2025 (-54%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2017, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.