How Unisex Baby Names Split in 2024 SSA Data
Published September 17, 2026
Unisex is often used as a hope: a name that will not box a child in. The 2024 Social Security tables are blunter. They show how often a spelled name was given on the girl list and on the boy list. Parker ranked 104th among girls and 97th among boys, with 2,517 girl births and 3,605 boy births in that year extract. Charlie ranked 140th among girls and 176th among boys, with almost matching counts (2,109 and 2,084). Avery ranked 31st among girls and 259th among boys. Those are three different objects, all marketed as unisex.
This article stays with names that appear on both 2024 gendered lists in this dataset and that exist as public catalog profiles. It will not tell you what a name “should” be. It will tell you which way the 2024 traffic actually leaned.
Close splits versus one-sided unisex names
The closest popular splits in the 2024 extract include Parker (104th girls / 97th boys), Tatum (205th / 195th), Charlie (140th / 176th), and Blake (210th / 265th). These names are unisex in the statistical sense: both lists are using them in the same neighborhood. If you wanted a name that does not scream a column, start here, then still listen. Parker will not sound identical in every region, but the national counts are not a landslide.
Avery and Riley are the other famous story. Avery was 31st among girls and 259th among boys in 2024 (5,632 girl births versus 1,348 boy births). Riley was 42nd among girls and 229th among boys (4,644 versus 1,567). Calling them unisex is historically fair and currently incomplete. In this year’s national data they are girl-leaning names with a smaller boy residual. If you choose Avery for a boy, you are not breaking a law. You are choosing the smaller stream.
Boy-leaning names that still appear for girls
Logan ranked 46th among boys and 391st among girls in 2024. Cameron ranked 66th among boys and 485th among girls. Rowan ranked 71st among boys and 266th among girls. River ranked 112th among boys and 214th among girls. Sawyer ranked 132nd among boys and 297th among girls. Hayden ranked 154th among boys and 401st among girls. The girl use is real and smaller.
Parents sometimes pick these for a girl specifically because they sound less frilly. That motive shows up in the data as a minority stream, not as a 50/50 split. Rowan and River are closer to mixed than Cameron is. Cameron’s girl rank in the 400s versus a boy rank of 66th is a wide gap. If you want the name to be heard as unisex on first introduction, Cameron will often still be heard as a boy name. Rowan is softer on that test for many U.S. ears.
Girl-leaning names that still appear for boys
Eden ranked 72nd among girls and 466th among boys in 2024. Quinn ranked 96th among girls and 497th among boys. Sage ranked 146th among girls and 413th among boys. Emerson ranked 151st among girls and 270th among boys. Remi ranked 145th among girls and 809th among boys. These are the mirror image of Logan: living unisex vocabulary with a clear majority on the girl list.
Quinn is a useful Irish-tagged example because it is short, easy, and still not balanced. Sage is a word-name whose plant gloss may be doing as much work as gender mix. Emerson is a surname-name that sits closer to even than Quinn, though girls still led in 2024. If your goal is mix rather than a nature word, Emerson and Parker are better evidence than Sage.
What “unisex” will not do for a child
A mixed SSA pattern will not prevent other children from assigning a gender to the name on the playground. Charlie still gets “is that a boy or a girl?” in some rooms even with nearly even 2024 counts. Avery on a boy will get more of that question than Avery on a girl, because of the landslide. The data can tell you which question you are signing up for. It cannot abolish the question.
It also cannot tell you how your family will use the name. Some households want a name that works regardless of gender because they are waiting to meet the baby. Some want a name that already belongs to multiple genders in public. Those are different projects. The first is about your timeline. The second is about the culture the name already has. Use the 2024 split to see the culture. Do not use it to postpone a decision you have already made.
Origin patterns inside the mixed list
A lot of the statistically unisex names in this catalog are English surname or word names: Parker, River, Sawyer, Blake, Emerson, Charlie. Irish-tagged Riley, Rowan, and Quinn show a second cluster. August, cataloged as German and unisex here, ranked 88th among boys in 2024 and 910th among girls, which is unisex in theory and boy-leaning in this year’s counts. An origin tag will not predict the split by itself. English occupational names are simply over-represented in the currently mixed set.
If you like the Irish mixed cluster, compare Riley, Rowan, and Quinn against each other rather than against Parker. They do not share Parker’s even split. Riley is girl-leaning at the top of the girl list; Rowan is boy-leaning in the boy top 80; Quinn is girl-leaning near 100. Same origin tag, three traffic patterns. That is why counts have to sit next to origin tags.
A practical way to use the 2024 split
Decide whether you need a near-even name or merely a name that exists on both lists. Near-even: Parker, Charlie, Tatum. Girl-majority with boy use: Avery, Riley, Eden, Quinn, Sage. Boy-majority with girl use: Logan, Cameron, Rowan, River, Sawyer. Then say the name with your last name and notice whether you are already voicing it as one gender. Your voice is data too.
For more Irish-tagged mixed names in one place, browse Irish baby names and then return to the individual 2024 ranks instead of assuming every Quinn-like name is balanced. Unisex is a distribution. It is not a moral category, and it is not a guarantee that the name will stay mixed next year.
If the 2024 split makes you uneasy, you do not want that name, no matter how appealing the idea of unisex sounded in a search box. Pick a name whose current traffic you can live with. Parker’s near-even counts are a fact about 2024. Avery’s girl landslide is a fact about 2024. Your child will live in a year that has a pattern. Look at the pattern before you fall in love with the category.