Liam

Editor’s take on Liam

Liam is currently in the unusual position of being both the most popular boy's name in America and still growing — 22,164 births in 2024, its highest count ever, up 20% over the past decade. That's a different shape than most names at the top of the chart, which tend to be sliding down from an earlier peak even while holding rank.

The name barely existed as a US birth record before the late 1940s and didn't take off until decades later, originally as the Irish short form of William before becoming a name in its own right. It's held the #1 spot continuously since 2017, which is a long run by modern standards, when turnover at the top used to happen every few years.

Its famous bearers skew recent and specific — Liam Payne, Liam Hemsworth, Formula One's Liam Lawson — which suggests the name's rise tracks a generation of parents naming after people roughly their own age rather than historical figures, a pattern that's less common among older top-ranked names like James or William.

— NameCharted, updated 2026-07-21