1990s Baby Names

22,091 names were given to children in the United States between 1990 and 1999, ranked below by how many.

A name's place is its total across those ten years. Names that appear in only some of the decade say so, because a name recorded once is a different fact from one recorded every year.

All Girls Boys Unisex

Rankings for

#326
Alison Alison means little Alice, and Alice means noble — but the Norman name behind it is a heavy compression of the Germanic Adalheidis, so the noble is all that survived of a longer compound.
19,794 in the 1990s
#329
Jillian Jillian means youthful, and it descends from the same Roman family name as July — Julius, Julia, Jill and Jillian all come from the gens that claimed descent from Venus.
19,761 in the 1990s
#330
Nancy Nancy is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "grace."
19,633 in the 1990s
#331
Raven Raven means the bird, and the bird was a war omen before it was a goth accessory — Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry lists the raven with the wolf and the eagle as the beasts that follow an army.
19,631 in the 1990s
#334
Audrey Audrey is a girl's name of Old English origin meaning "noble strength," from Æthelthryth.
19,594 in the 1990s
#335
Faith Faith is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "trust" or "belief," one of the virtue names the Puritans put into use in the sixteenth century.
19,563 in the 1990s
#338
Alejandra Alejandra means defender of men, and the Spanish form lost a consonant Greek never had trouble with — Alexandros became Alejandro because Spanish shifted the sh sound to the throaty j it uses today.
19,272 in the 1990s
#341
Krystal Krystal means ice, and the Greeks believed rock crystal was water frozen so hard it could never melt — which is why the same word names both the mineral and the frost.
19,115 in the 1990s
#342
Ariana Ariana is a girl's name of Greek origin, from Ariadne — the Cretan princess who gave Theseus the thread to escape the labyrinth.
18,913 in the 1990s
#343
Summer Summer is a girl's name of Old English origin taken from the season, from sumor.
18,836 in the 1990s
#344
Isabella Isabella is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is my oath," a Spanish and Italian form of Elizabeth that developed through Occitan and Old Spanish in the medieval period.
18,774 in the 1990s
#345
Mikayla Mikayla respells Michaela, and the Hebrew behind both is a question — who is like God — whose expected answer is nobody.
18,746 in the 1990s
#347
Katrina Katrina has no securely known meaning, because Catherine does not — the Greek original has never been derived, and the pure reading was attached centuries later by a false association.
18,424 in the 1990s
#354
Kiara Kiara is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "bright" or "clear."
17,897 in the 1990s
#356
Sandra Sandra is a girl's name that began as an Italian short form of Alessandra and became independent in the twentieth century.
17,736 in the 1990s
#362
Meagan Meagan means pearl at four removes — Welsh Megan shortens Marged, which is Margaret, which is the Greek margarites, which is probably a loan from further east than Greece.
17,124 in the 1990s
#366
Lydia Lydia is a girl's name meaning "woman from Lydia," an ancient kingdom in what is now western Turkey.
16,991 in the 1990s
#369
Zoe Zoe is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "life," taken directly from the Greek word zoe.
16,919 in the 1990s
#370
Kirsten Kirsten means a follower of the anointed one, and the anointing is literal — Christ translates the Hebrew mashiach, and both words describe someone smeared with oil at a coronation rather than a divine title.
16,919 in the 1990s
#372
Chelsey
16,853 in the 1990s
#374
Monique Monique is a girl's name, the French form of Monica, whose meaning is genuinely unknown despite the confident answers usually given for it.
16,811 in the 1990s
#379
Claudia Claudia means lame, and it comes from one of Rome's most powerful families.
16,607 in the 1990s
#380
Mallory Mallory means unlucky, and it is one of very few names built on an insult — the Norman malheuré described someone ill-fated, and it became a surname before anyone used it as a first name.
16,562 in the 1990s
#381
Joanna Joanna means God is gracious, and it charts in all seven markets we track — the United States 306th, Ireland 367th, Scotland 395th, Northern Ireland 432nd, England and Wales 514th and France 721st.
16,356 in the 1990s
#383
Isabel Isabel is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is my oath."
16,246 in the 1990s
#385
Deanna Deanna was popularized by a stage name — the actress born Edna Mae Durbin was renamed Deanna Durbin in 1936, and American births rose from almost nothing to a peak of 4,331 in 1970.
16,234 in the 1990s
#386
Mckenzie Mckenzie means son of Coinneach, and the z was never a z — it replaced a lost Scots letter called yogh, so the name has been mispronounced into its own spelling.
16,218 in the 1990s
#389
Ashlee Ashlee is the third spelling of one name on this site, alongside Ashleigh and Ashlyn — all descend from the Old English for an ash-tree clearing, and the ash was the tree spears were made from.
16,047 in the 1990s
#391
Diamond
15,987 in the 1990s
#393
Felicia Felicia means lucky, and the Latin felix meant fertile before it meant fortunate — the word originally described soil and livestock that produced well, and good fortune was a later extension of it.
15,664 in the 1990s
#394
Marisa Marisa is a blend rather than an inherited name — Italian joined Maria to Luisa, and the result reads as though it means sea, which it does not, since Maria's own meaning is unsettled.
15,544 in the 1990s
#396
Jasmin Jasmin names a flower whose own name is Persian, and it traveled the length of Eurasia — yasmin passed through Arabic into Europe with the plant itself, arriving as a word and a cutting together.
15,429 in the 1990s
#397
Mercedes Mercedes is a plural, and it means wages before it means mercies — the Latin merces is payment, and the Spanish title Our Lady of Mercies turned a commercial word into a devotional one.
15,376 in the 1990s
#398
Yesenia
15,295 in the 1990s
#399
Krista Krista means a follower of Christ, and it is the sixth spelling of this name family to appear in our gap band — after Kristin, Kristen, Kristina, Kristine and Kristi.
15,219 in the 1990s
#400
Evelyn Evelyn is a girl's name of English and French origin meaning "desired" or "wished for".
15,206 in the 1990s
#401
Brandy Brandy is named for the drink, and the drink means burned wine — the Dutch brandewijn described wine heated to distil it, so the name records a manufacturing process rather than a quality.
15,200 in the 1990s
#402
Cindy Cindy is a girl's name, a pet form of Cynthia, which was a title of the moon goddess Artemis.
15,134 in the 1990s
#403
Selena Selena means the moon, and its curve has a shape we see nowhere else — American births went 918 in 1994 to 3,840 in 1995, the year Selena Quintanilla was killed on 31 March, then fell back to 2,296 the next year.
15,077 in the 1990s
#405
Gina Gina is not one name — it is the ending of several different ones, and which name it shortens changes the meaning entirely.
14,904 in the 1990s
#408
Tori Tori means victory through Victoria, and a separate Japanese tori means bird — the two are unrelated, and the shrine gates called torii are a third word again.
14,850 in the 1990s
#414
Mia Mia is a girl's name that began as a short form of longer names such as Maria and Amelia before becoming an independent given name in its own right.
14,636 in the 1990s
#415
Bridget Bridget means exalted one, and it belonged to a goddess before a saint — Brigid was the Irish deity of poetry, smithcraft and healing, and the saint absorbed her feast, her fire and her attributes.
14,612 in the 1990s
#417
Kassandra
14,545 in the 1990s
#418
Priscilla Priscilla means ancient or venerable, and it is a diminutive — so the name literally reads as little old one, which was a mark of respect rather than an insult.
14,530 in the 1990s
#419
Alisha Alisha means noble, and it is British and Irish rather than American — England and Wales 376th, Ireland 381st and Northern Ireland 407th all rank it far above the United States at 1229th.
14,522 in the 1990s
#421
Anne Anne is a girl's name from the Hebrew Hannah, meaning favor or grace.
14,493 in the 1990s
#425
Hope Hope is a girl's name of Old English origin taken from the virtue, from hopian.
14,329 in the 1990s

What made a 1990s name

Nothing about the sound of it. A name is on this page because children in the United States were registered with it between 1990 and 1999, and its position is simply how many. Every list of "1990s names" you will find elsewhere is somebody's sense of the period; this one is the register.

Why Some Names Only Cover Part of the Decade

A name that appears in three of the ten years either arrived partway through or faded out — and either is more interesting than the total on its own. The statistics offices do not publish names given to very few children in a year, so a gap can also mean the count dropped below the threshold rather than to nothing.

Where to Go Next

Open any name to see its full curve — most of these have a hundred and forty years of it. Or compare the ends of the same measurement: the most popular names now and the rarest.