Two familiar favorites were 2022’s most popular baby names in Pennsylvania. See the data

Liam, Noah, Olivia and Charlotte have dominated Pennsylvania’s baby name leaderboards for years, and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.

Newly released data from the Social Security Administration shows Liam (No. 2 in 2021) was the most popular boys’ name in the Keystone State in 2022. Olivia, meanwhile, stayed at No. 1 for girls’ names for the second year in a row.

According to the agency’s records, Liam has finished in Pennsylvania’s No. 1 or No. 2 spot every year in the last decade, primarily swapping positions with Noah, which finished in second place in 2022. Olivia, which has finished in first place four times in the last decade, has primarily competed with Emma and Charlotte as the most popular girls’ names in Pennsylvania.

Locally, Theodore and Ellie were respectively the most popular boys’ and girls’ names at Mount Nittany Medical Center.

Liam and Olivia were the top boy and girl names across the entire country, the SSA reports. Liam has topped the U.S. boys’ name charts for six years in a row, while Olivia’s reign atop the girls’ name leaderboard has now lasted for four years.

These were the most popular names given to boys born in Pennsylvania in 2022, according to the SSA:

1. Liam
2. Noah
3. Oliver
4. Theodore
5. Benjamin
6. James
7. Owen
8. Lucas
9. Henry
10. Michael

These were the most popular names given to girls born in Pennsylvania in 2022, the SSA says:

1. Olivia
2. Charlotte
3. Emma
4. Sophia
5. Amelia
6. Ava
7. Isabella
8. Harper
9. Evelyn
10. Mia

The SSA tallies the nation’s most popular baby names by tracking applications for Social Security cards, which the agency has overseen for more than a century.

The SSA maintains several qualifications for including names in its annual release of the nation’s most popular baby names. Notably, the agency removes hyphens and spaces when tabulating name data, so “Julie-Anne,” “Julie Anne” and “Julieanne,” for example, are all counted as single entries. Additionally, different spellings of names that sound the same — Caitlyn and Katelynn, Sean and Shawn and so on — are considered separate names.

Matt DiSanto

Centre Daily Times

814-231-4616

Matt is a 2022 Penn State graduate. Before arriving at the Centre Daily Times, he served as Onward State’s managing editor and a general assignment reporter at StateCollege.com. Support my work with a digital subscription