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Boys' name · 134,644 recorded births

Gene

#2,230 in the US in 2025

Where Gene stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#2,230boys’ names · US 2025

Gene was the 2,230th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 63 births.

peak 1937 · 3,165188019532025

Its moment was 1937, when 3,165 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#2,230US rank, 2025 (boys)
63US births in 2025
#61its best US rank, in 1937
1937peak year — 3,165 births
126,877US births since 1880
463NZ births since 1963
307E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Gene's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Gene was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Gene in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0148297
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Gene in the United States, 1880–2025
boysgirls

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Gene in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Gene has been registered 463 times since 1963, peaking in 1971 with 34 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.058116
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Gene in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Gene in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Gene was registered 307 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2025 with 54 births. It ranked #668 for boys in 2025 on 54 births. Across those years it has been rising.

20200.09.920
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Gene in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#7457
1890#43417
1900#30148
1910#25391
1920#173810
1930#702,787
1940#703,060
1950#1222,250
1960#1741,796
1970#250934
1980#380451
1990#617267
2000#1,128123
2010#2,06965
2020#1,65596

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Gene most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California8,025
Texas7,834
Illinois6,997
Ohio6,871
New York5,813
Pennsylvania5,374
Missouri4,283
Michigan4,124
North Carolina4,095
Indiana4,081

Questions about Gene

How popular is the name Gene?

Gene ranked #2,230 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 63 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Gene most popular?

Gene peaked in 1937, when 3,165 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Gene rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Gene has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1937, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.