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20 Baby Names Quietly Changing Sex (2015 to 2025)

Blake is now 1,035 girls and 1,080 boys — a gap of 45 babies. Twenty names that crossed over in the last decade, with official national birth data, including ten that flipped from girl to boy.

In 2015, Blake was a boys’ name. Not an ambiguous one — a decisive one. That year 4,234 American boys were named Blake, against 752 girls. Roughly six in seven Blakes born that year were boys.

In 2024, for the first time in 140 years of national records, Blake went to more girls than boys: 1,461 to 1,321.

Then in 2025 it tipped back — 1,080 boys, 1,035 girls. A gap of 45 babies.

Blake isn’t a name that’s about to cross over. It has already crossed, crossed back, and is now sitting on the line.

Blake is not alone. Across the last ten years of the official national birth record, a whole cohort of names has quietly slid from one column to the other — and, less obviously, a smaller group has slid back the other way.

The surname-name pipeline

Most crossovers in the last decade follow one route: a surname becomes a boys’ first name, then becomes a girls’ first name. Each step takes about a generation. Right now a lot of names are on the second step at once.

Palmer is the cleanest example of the pattern. Ten years ago it was close to even. Today 85% of American babies named Palmer are girls, and the girls’ side has grown more than sevenfold while the boys’ side barely moved.

Murphy is the most complete flip in the group. In 2015 it leaned boy, 149 to 88. In 2025 it leans girl, 783 to 341 — and it is now a top-400 girls’ name at #397 while sitting at #754 for boys.

The names mid-flip right now

These four haven’t finished crossing. They are the ones to watch, because a name sitting near 50/50 is a name whose next five years decide its identity for the next fifty.

Blake is the furthest along, and its path is worth looking at year by year, because it shows what “crossing over” actually looks like up close:

It took nine years to get to the line, touched the other side for exactly one year, and came back. That’s the honest shape of it — not a clean handover but a name hovering, and likely to keep hovering for a while.

Parker is the heavyweight here by volume: 2,536 girls and 3,477 boys in 2025, which makes it a top-110 name on both sides of the record simultaneously (#106 for girls, #102 for boys). Very few names in American history have been that popular and that evenly split at the same time.

The ten that flipped the other way

This is the part that gets missed. The surname pipeline runs one way, so people assume crossover does too. It doesn’t.

These ten names were majority-girl in 2015 and are majority-boy in 2025. Not drifting — actually across the line.

Bellamy is the sharpest reversal in the group. In 2015 it was 89% girls — 186 girls to 24 boys. In 2025 it is 341 girls to 374 boys, and for the first time more American boys than girls are given the name.

Shiloh and Tatum are the two biggest by volume, and both crossed while growing on both sides. Shiloh went from 485 girls and 247 boys to 1,098 girls and 1,220 boys — the girls’ side more than doubled and the boys’ side still overtook it.

Jamie has done something stranger: it has crossed the line twice. The record shows it leaning boy for five years in the mid-1970s, at the height of its overall run, then girl for the next four decades, and boy again every year since 2021. Its girls’ side fell from 639 in 2015 to 316 in 2025 while the boys’ side climbed from 279 to 508.

What’s actually happening

Three things, as far as the record shows:

A name has to feel findable before it can cross. Every crossover name above was already uncommon enough to feel like a discovery. Names in the top 20 almost never cross; they’re too firmly attached.

Crossing is easier when the sound is short and consonant-heavy. Blake, Drew, Quincy, Palmer, Merritt — one or two syllables, hard edges, no obviously feminine ending. That profile has been read as “boy” for a century, which is exactly what makes it feel fresh on a girl.

Reversals happen when a name gets strongly attached to one well-known person or character. The five names crossing back all have that in common.

If you’re considering one

A name near 50/50 is genuinely ambiguous right now, and the ten-year direction matters more than any single year. Blake and Bellamy both sit at 48–49% girls today, but they arrived from opposite ends: Blake from 15% girls, Bellamy from 89%. A child born this year with either name will grow up with a different default assumption than one born in 2015 — and a different one again from a child born in 2035.

Look up the full year-by-year history for any of these names, including every state, at babynamesreport.com.

Discover more at babynamesreport.com

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration data, 1880–2025.