The city’s new generation reflects changing tastes in naming traditions
The New York City Department of Health released its annual baby names data, revealing that parents in the five boroughs chose Noah and Mia as the top names for boys and girls born in 2024. Of the 65,222 babies born in New York City during the year, Noah was selected 722 times and Mia 422 times, according to the health department’s comprehensive naming study.
Dramatic Changes in Baby Naming Traditions
The rise of Noah and Mia represents a significant shift in the city’s naming patterns. Noah and Mia dethroned Liam and Emma, names that had reigned at the top of NYC’s naming lists since 2016 and 2017 respectively. This changing of the guard suggests that parental naming preferences, influenced by cultural trends, celebrity influences, and shifting aesthetic sensibilities, evolve continuously across generations.
Understanding What Names Reveal
Each year’s list of popular baby names serves as a demographic fingerprint of the city, revealing not just individual parental preferences but broader cultural movements and values. The popularity of names like Noah and Mia reflects global naming trends spreading through social media, entertainment, and international cultural exchanges that characterize modern parenting.
The Top Five for Both Genders
The five most popular girls’ names in 2024 were Mia, Emma, Sophia, Leah and Isabella. For boys, the top five were Noah, Liam, Ethan, David and Lucas. These predominantly short, accessible names with international appeal suggest parents are gravitating toward names that work across multiple languages and cultural contexts.
What This Says About Parenting Choices
The consistency of certain names across multiple years, particularly Emma’s sustained popularity despite dropping to second place, indicates that some naming preferences have genuine staying power. The names favored by NYC parents tend to be pronounceable across multiple languages and unambiguously gendered, suggesting deliberate parental choices balancing tradition with modern sensibilities.
Names as Cultural Markers
Acting Health Commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse noted that the city’s baby names list serves as a reminder of who New York City is and who its next generation will be. The demographic diversity of New York, with families from every corner of the globe, should theoretically produce incredibly diverse naming patterns. Yet the popularity of names like Noah, Mia, Liam, and Emma suggests that certain international naming preferences are converging toward a global standard among cosmopolitan parents.
Looking Forward
The health department recommits itself annually to ensuring that all New York’s children can live long, healthy lives. The data about baby names, while seemingly trivial, reflects the city’s ongoing growth and change. As the next generation of New Yorkers bearing these popular names grows up, they will inherit a city in flux, where their identities will intersect with the complex social, economic, and political forces shaping contemporary urban life. Read NYC health data at New York State Vital Records. Explore naming trends at Social Security Administration baby names database. Learn about NYC demographics at U.S. Census Bureau. Understand parenting culture through Pew Research Center.
