Aubrey, Avery, Harper: how names cross over
Some of today’s best-loved girls’ names were once given almost entirely to boys. The birth records show exactly when, and how fast, they changed sides.
Every name on this site carries a small colored bar showing how it divides between boys and girls. For most names the bar hardly moves from decade to decade. For a handful, it has swung from one end to the other within a single lifetime.
The big crossovers
In the 1950s, Aubrey was a boy’s name: 3,370 boys and 92 girls, about 97 percent boys. Since 2016 it has gone to 39,531 girls and 1,308 boys, so about 3 percent boys.
Riley made the same journey even more completely. In the 1950s, 1,424 of the 1,442 Rileys born in the U.S. were boys. Since 2016, about 22 percent have been.
Avery went from 89 percent boys in the 1950s to about 20 percent boys today, and Quinn from nearly all boys to about 20 percent.
Aubrey
“one who rules with elfwisdom”
3% boys · 97% girls
Riley
“from the rye clearing; a courageous woman”
22% boys · 78% girls
Avery
“one who is a wise ruler; of the nobility”
20% boys · 80% girls
Quinn
“woman who is queenly” · “one who provides counsel; an intelligent man”
20% boys · 80% girls
The ones that switched fastest
Ashley is the textbook case. In the 1950s about three in four were boys. By the 1970s the share had fallen to 17 percent, and since 2016 it’s 1 percent. For Madison and Harper, the change is starker still: in the 1950s the records show only boys (about 400 Madisons and 100 Harpers) and no girls at all. Since 2016, 62,803 girls have been named Madison and 89,979 have been named Harper.
Does it ever go the other way?
Much less often. Names tend to move from boys toward girls and rarely back. There are small counter-currents, though. Kelly was 46 percent boys in the 1950s and dropped to 11 percent in the 1970s. Since 2016, with far fewer Kellys overall, it has drifted back up to about 21 percent.
And some names settle somewhere in between. Rowan is given to both, currently about three boys for every girl. Names like these are what we call shared names, and the Explore page can show you hundreds of them.
A name’s boy/girl balance isn’t a rule about who may wear it. It’s a record of what parents have chosen, and parents keep choosing.
Reading the bar
On every profile, the boy/girl chart shows the whole journey since 1880, year by year. If you love a name that’s in the middle of a crossover, it helps to know which way it’s heading, and how fast. But there’s no wrong side of the bar.