Some baby names have always been more popular than others, so it should come as no surprise that some names are shared by more college gymnasts than others. But how closely do naming trends among college gymnasts mirror those of society more broadly? To answer this question, we looked at the frequency of names among rostered gymnasts from the 2024-25 season, in contrast to data from the United States Social Security Administration (SSA) on popular baby names from the 2000s, the decade in which most, if not all, of the gymnasts active in the last season were born. 

Nationwide Analysis

We started with a nationwide analysis of naming trends, using the SSA’s data on the top 200 names of the decade. The table below compares the top 10 names on the list to the 10 names that appeared most frequently on the rosters. Five names–Emily, Madison, Emma, Olivia, and Hannah–were ranked in the top 10 on both lists, albeit in different orders. Coincidentally, these names constituted the top five in the SSA database, and three of the top five among gymnasts.

Rank	SSA Database	2024/25 Rosters
1	Emily	Olivia
2	Madison	Emma
3	Emma	Ava
4	Olivia	Emily
5	Hannah	Sophia
6	Abigail	Hannah
7	Isabella	Lauren
8	Samantha	Anna
9	Elizabeth	Grace
10	Ashley	Madison

Expanding our analysis beyond the top 10, the red bars in the chart below show the percentage of gymnasts having each of the top 200 names on the SSA list. As a reference, the black line shows the popularity of each name, relative to that of the other names on the top 200 list, based on the SSA’s data. The chart suggests that names ranked closer to the top of the SSA list were generally more common among gymnasts. But there were certainly notable deviations, with several peaks and troughs in the red bars.

These findings were similarly reflected when visualizing the rank of each name in the rosters, against the SSA’s top 200 list. In general, the red points in the chart below follow the black dashed line, along which the rank in one source equals that in the other. This was particularly true for the top 50 ranks, with the red points clustered quite closely around the black dashed line. When looking at ranks towards the bottom of the list, however, deviations from the dashed black line became more apparent.

The table below shows the top 10 names from each source that were not found at all on the other source. Some of these disparities could be caused by gymnasts’ use of nicknames. For example, gymnasts might use Alex or Alexa in place of Alexandra, which ranked 40th in the SSA’s list. Similarly, names such as Bella and Gabby that were common in the rosters may not have been officially registered with the SSA.

SSA Database		2024/25 Rosters
Rank	Name	Rank	Name
29	Jasmine	28	Bella
40	Alexandra	40	Gabby
53	Andrea	43	Reese
74	Vanessa	50	Maddie
80	Evelyn	60	Lindsay
86	Nevaeh	65	Allie
106	Angela	73	Lexi
107	Shelby	80	Sage
108	Leslie	84	Carly
112	Diana	85	Clara

By Home States

Besides nationwide data, the SSA also maintains lists of the top five names by state each year. We aggregated these lists to obtain state-level data for the entire decade using a points system: the top-ranked name in each year was awarded five points, the second-ranked name four points, and so on. We then summed the points over the lists from 2000 to 2009 inclusive, and ranked the names in order of descending points. The chart below shows the number of gymnasts in the 2024-25 season with the top-ranked names in their home state. For example, five gymnasts from California were named “Emily”, the most popular baby name in the state over the last decade, according to our points system.

As shown, not every state had its most popular names represented in college gymnastics in the 2024-25 season. In fact, some states, such as Alabama, did not have any of their most popular names from the 2000s represented at all. Certainly, these results reflected in part the disparity in the distribution of home states among college gymnasts; for instance, California, the home state of the most gymnasts at 162, saw all of its top eight names represented. But this factor could not entirely explain these findings: Texas, the second most common home state with 133 gymnasts, had six of its top 11 names represented by 10 gymnasts, a similar result to Georgia, home to only 48 gymnasts, but with six of its top 10 names represented by eight gymnasts.

Conclusion

Overall, the analysis suggests that the nationwide naming trends observed in society as a whole also show up in college gymnastics rosters, to an extent. However, the same cannot always be said for state-level naming trends. Moreover, variations in spelling and the use of nicknames may alter the popularity of particular names among gymnasts.

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Article by Dara Tan