Rounding out the top five: William, Jayden and Noah. Michael came in sixth, his lowest ranking since 1948.

The Social Security Administration provides lists of baby names dating to 1880 on its website. The top two names that year were John and Mary. The list, which includes top baby names by state, draws millions of people. The agency hopes that people go to the website to see the baby names and stay to learn about other services, said Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue.

Top girl names tend to be more volatile — changing from year to year — while the top boy names are more stable, Astrue said. William, for example, has been a popular boy’s name for more than 100 years, never falling out of the top 20. Mason is the exception, entering the top 100 for the first time in 1997.

On the girls’ side, Sophia first cracked the top 100 in 1997. Isabella dropped off the list altogether from 1949 to 1990.

Social Security also tracks which names increase in popularity from year to year and which ones drop.

The fastest rising name for girls: Briella, which jumped 394 spots, to No. 497. Briella Calafiore stars in “Jerseylicious,” a reality TV show about battling stylists at a beauty salon in Green Brook, N.J. She’s also in a spinoff called “Glam Fairy.”

Brantley was the fastest rising name for boys, jumping 416 spots to No. 320. Brantley Gilbert is a singer who had a No. 1 country hit called “Country Must Be Country Wide”.

Americans get baby names from a lot of places — religion, relatives and, yes, popular culture, said Laura Wattenberg, creator of the website, babynamewizard.com.

Wattenberg likened baby naming trends to “a fossil record of our culture.”

“It shows what we’re paying attention to, what we’re thinking about,” she said. “Today, you can’t walk through a supermarket without learning more than you hoped to know about the Kardashian family. That’s just reality.”

But, Wattenberg said, parents aren’t necessarily paying homage to celebrities. In many cases, they are simply using a name they might not have heard otherwise.

“Celebrity naming is just about the exposure, and about everybody hearing that name at the same time,” Wattenberg said. “It’s not about the fame, it’s about the name.”

Religion continued to have a big influence on baby names, but with a twist.

“The traditional biblical names were New Testament names — John, James and Mary and Elizabeth,” Wattenberg said. “Today, the hot names are all names from the Old testament precisely because they were neglected for so many generations.”

In addition to Jacob and Noah, Elijah at No. 13 and Joshua at No. 14 were all from the Old Testament.

Among the names that fell in popularity, Brisa dropped more spots than any other — 343 places, to No. 807. Dana, Desiree and Denise also plummeted.

Brett dropped more than any other name for boys, 119 spots, to No. 508. Jamarion, Shaun and Jaydon also dropped.

Social Security counts names with different spellings separately. For example, Aiden was No. 9 among boys, while Aidan was No. 107 and Aaden was No. 797. Among the girls, Sophia was No. 1 while Sofia was No. 19. Sophie was No. 51. Zoey was No. 29 and Zoe was No. 31.

Elvis returned to the list at No. 904, after dropping off for a year. When Elvis dropped off the in 2010, it ended a run that had started in 1955.

Astrue, a big Elvis fan, said he was all shook up when Elvis left the list.

“Congress may not listen to me,” Astrue said. “But God bless the American people for listening to me last year when I raised concerns about Elvis dropping off.”

Were they listening to him when they named their daughters after the star of “Jerseylicious?”

“I don’t even know what that show’s about,” Astrue said.

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Online:

Social Security Administration: www.ssa.gov

The Baby Name Wizard: www.babynamewizard.com

The only other Republican still in the race, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, has 94 delegates.

Romney won all 27 delegates at stake in Indiana and at least 28 of the 52 delegates up for grabs in North Carolina. Voters also went to the polls in West Virginia, with 28 delegates at stake, but delegate results were not expected on election night.

West Virginia elects individual delegates directly on the ballot. Each delegate is listed on the ballot — three in each of the three congressional districts and 19 statewide — along with the presidential candidate they support. With 112 candidates running for the 19 statewide spots, results were expected to be late.

North Carolina awarded delegates in direct proportion to the statewide vote, so Paul should win a few delegates even though he was trailing Romney by 55 percentage points with about 42 percent of the precincts reporting.

Even Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, who both dropped out of the race, stand to win a few North Carolina delegates because their names were still on the ballot.

But unless he persuades a lot more Santorum and Gingrich delegates to switch allegiances, Romney might not clinch until the Texas primary May 29. On Sunday, Romney lost 11 delegates to Texas Rep. Ron Paul when Paul’s supporters won control of the Maine GOP convention and elected Paul delegates to the party’s national convention.

Romney is “the projected candidate,” said Peggy Lambert, a member of the Republican National Committee from Tennessee who endorsed Romney last week. “Let’s go ahead and get this thing over with. Let’s get as many delegates as we can.”

Santorum and Gingrich have said they will help Romney defeat Obama, but neither has released his delegates to vote for Romney at the national convention in August. Santorum has 257 delegates and Gingrich has 130. In interviews during the past week, many delegates said they were reluctant to back Romney without guidance from their former candidates.

Paul is the only other Republican still in the race, and he has 94 delegates.

Many committee members are getting behind Romney, though some are half-hearted about it. These party leaders — three from each state and U.S. territory — automatically attend the national convention and, in most states, can support any candidate they choose.

They will be asked to donate, volunteer and work for Republican candidates up and down the ticket, making their support for Romney an important barometer of enthusiasm and unity among GOP loyalists.

“I think the process has narrowed down and we’ve got a chance to hear all the candidates and all the debate,” said Jonathan Barnett, an RNC member from Arkansas who serves in the state Legislature. “Really, he’s pretty much the only one left standing. It’s time to get on board.”

Alabama GOP chairman Bill Armistead sounded more enthusiastic. He said he’s recruiting volunteers to help Romney in Florida, where the race will be much closer than in Alabama.

“The No. 1 objective of the people I talk to is to defeat Barack Obama,” Armistead said.

The RNC has 168 members. Some are required to support the candidate who wins the primary in their state. The AP has identified 120 who are free to support any candidate they choose, regardless of the primaries.

Romney has endorsements from 57 of them, according to the AP’s latest survey, conducted in the past week after Gingrich’s plans to leave the race became public. Paul has one endorsement, while 60 RNC members are holding off on endorsing anyone, even with the race essentially decided. (Two RNC spots won’t be filled until June.)

Some RNC members say they have yet to endorse Romney because of local concerns.

Kentucky GOP chairman Steve Robertson said he isn’t endorsing anyone out of deference to Paul’s son, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. In Oregon, Nebraska and New Mexico, RNC members say they won’t endorse anyone before their states’ primaries, which have yet to be held.

Back when the primary race was competitive, some RNC members questioned Romney’s conservative credentials. In the latest survey, no RNC member was willing to say he or she had a problem with him.

But Richard Giessel, a Santorum delegate in Alaska, wasn’t shy about his disdain for Romney, calling him “a big government guy.”

“We’ve got too big a government now,” said Giessel, who said he now plans to support Ron Paul.

Romney added 22 RNC endorsements since the last AP survey in early April, and he has support from every region of the country. None of Romney’s rivals was able to gain much traction among the RNC delegates. Gingrich had four endorsements at one point, more than any of the others.

Drew Johnson, a Gingrich delegate from South Carolina, said he thinks the state’s delegates will unite behind Romney. South Carolina, a solidly Republican state, was one of only two states Gingrich won in the primaries.

“Romney has my endorsement and he can count on South Carolina to be one of his biggest cheering sections at the national convention,” said Johnson, who leads the Chester County Republicans. “My focus is crystal clear for the upcoming election. We will be making calls to any state it is needed and even send South Carolina activists to real swing states to defeat Obama.”

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Associated Press writers Erik Schelzig in Nashville, Tenn.; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Ark.; Phillip Rawls in Montgomery, Ala.; Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C.; Kristen Wyatt in Denver, Colo., and Glenn Adams in Augusta, Maine, contributed to this report.