Oliver: boys named per year, 1880 to 2025
Oliver: boys named per year stood at 14,939 in 2025, down 3.0% on the previous period.
14,939 American boys were named Oliver in 2025. The name's recorded peak is 15,396 in 2024; the series runs from 1880.
How it is measured
The counts come from Social Security card applications, tabulated by the SSA by year of birth, name, and sex. It is administrative data, not a survey: every point is actual registrations. Two caveats shape the edges: names with fewer than five occurrences in a year are withheld for privacy, and the earliest decades undercount births because Social Security began in 1935 and older people applied late or never.
What the curve shows
Name data is one of the cleanest cultural time series in existence, and the curves behave like fashion: a rise usually has a traceable trigger, a famous namesake or a character, and the decay is slow because names linger in families after they leave the zeitgeist. Oliver is at or near its recorded high, which for a name is the crest of the wave.
Does this count everyone with the name?
Why do old names look rarer than they were?
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