In 146 years of Social Security baby name records, 14,881 first names appear exactly once: 5 babies in a single year, and never again. That is as rare as a name can be and still show up in the records, because Social Security lists a name only in years when at least 5 babies of the same sex received it. Names given to fewer babies are real, but they never appear in the public data.
These records cover the United States. No country-by-country count exists for the whole world, so the worldwide question has no exact answer. This guide looks at what the US records do show: the names given the fewest times, the newest one-time names, and names that have all but vanished.
How Many Names Were Given Only a Few Times?
Of the 105,966 first names in the records from 1880 to 2025, most were given very few times. This table groups them by the total number of babies who received each name:
| Babies given the name, 1880 to 2025 | Names |
|---|---|
| 5 (one year only) | 14,881 |
| 6 to 10 | 10,923 |
| 11 to 20 | 12,595 |
| 21 to 50 | 15,770 |
| 51 to 100 | 11,274 |
| 101 to 1,000 | 28,663 |
| more than 1,000 | 11,860 |
More than half of all names were given to 50 babies or fewer in 146 years. On How Many of Mee, 103,507 names are in the Very Rare tier, with 10,000 or fewer people alive.
The Newest One-Time Names
548 of the one-time names first appeared in 2025, given to exactly 5 babies that year. Among them are Agapi, Anointed, Calgary, Idgie and Lumena. Whether they stay one-time names depends on the coming years: a name that 5 more babies receive in 2026 will show up again.
Names That Have All but Vanished
Some names were given for decades and then stopped. 2,307 names in the records were last given in 1925 or earlier. These are the ones with the most births:
| Name | Babies given the name | First and last year |
|---|---|---|
| Rettie | 163 | 1881 to 1920 |
| Stanislawa | 159 | 1908 to 1925 |
| Goldye | 147 | 1901 to 1923 |
| Wladyslaw | 119 | 1911 to 1925 |
| Tyyne | 118 | 1901 to 1921 |
| Oiva | 104 | 1913 to 1924 |
| Uno | 103 | 1908 to 1923 |
| Orphia | 101 | 1897 to 1925 |
Several come from other languages. According to Behind the Name, Genowefa is the Polish form of Geneviève, Oiva means “splendid” in Finnish, and Tyyne is derived from Finnish tyyni “calm, serene”.
Because the people given these names were born so long ago, almost no one with these names is still alive. On the site, 3,264 names have no living estimate at all: their pages say that almost no one with the name is alive today.
Why No One Can Count One-of-a-Kind Names
- The 5-baby threshold. A name given to 1 to 4 babies of one sex in a year is left out of the public records to protect privacy, so the truly unique names are invisible.
- Spellings count separately. A rare spelling of a common name shows up as its own rare name.
- No worldwide records. Each country counts names its own way, and many publish no counts at all.
How Rare Is Your Name?
- Type your first name in the search box on the home page.
- Its page shows about how many people alive in the US have it, 1 in how many people that is, and its rarity tier.
- If your name has no page, fewer than 5 babies of one sex received it in every year since 1880, which makes it rarer than any name in this guide.
For the rarest names on record across all years, see the rarest baby names ever recorded.