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

#801
Brittani
6,210 in the 1990s
#802
Frances Frances is a girl's name meaning a Frank, or a free one, and the feminine of Francis.
6,179 in the 1990s
#805
Tania Tania descends from a Sabine name nobody can translate, and Shakespeare's Titania is a different word — that one comes from the Titans, so the two are unrelated despite constant confusion.
6,158 in the 1990s
#806
Alma Alma is a girl's name with several competing origins: "nourishing" in Latin, "soul" in Spanish, and "young woman" in Hebrew.
6,158 in the 1990s
#807
Shanice
6,155 in the 1990s
#808
Mariana Mariana names the deepest place on earth by a long chain — the Mariana Trench is called after the Mariana Islands, which were named for a Spanish queen, so the name reaches the sea floor through a monarch.
6,147 in the 1990s
#809
Kristy Kristy is the seventh spelling of this name family in our gap band, and the count itself is the finding — one Latin word has produced seven separate pages on this site through American respelling alone.
6,136 in the 1990s
#814
India
6,125 in the 1990s
#815
Josie Josie is a girl's name that began as a pet form of Josephine, and so means "he will add," inherited from the Hebrew Yosef.
6,117 in the 1990s
#818
Lucy Lucy is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "light," from lux.
6,097 in the 1990s
#819
Giselle Giselle means a pledge, and the pledge was a person — the Germanic gisil named a hostage given as security for a treaty.
6,087 in the 1990s
#820
Johanna Johanna means God is gracious, and it heads one of the largest name families in Europe — Jane, Joan, Jean, Janet, Sinead and Siobhan are all the same name arriving by different national routes.
6,071 in the 1990s
#821
Jeanette Jeanette means God is gracious, a French double diminutive of Jeanne.
6,071 in the 1990s
#824
Christy Christy serves both Christine and Christopher, so it is used for both sexes — 98 percent of the births in our records are female, but the masculine use remains ordinary in Ireland.
6,044 in the 1990s
#827
Allie Allie means noble, and it serves three different names at once — Alice, Allison and Alexandra all shorten to it, so which one a given Allie belongs to cannot be read off the name itself.
6,013 in the 1990s
#830
Noelle Noelle is a girl's name of French origin meaning "Christmas."
5,984 in the 1990s
#831
Irene Irene is a girl's name from the Greek word for peace, and the name of the goddess who personified it.
5,975 in the 1990s
#835
Haylee
5,954 in the 1990s
#838
Kaila
5,939 in the 1990s
#839
Carley
5,934 in the 1990s
#841
Breana
5,925 in the 1990s
#842
Simone Simone is a girl's name meaning he has heard, the French feminine of Simon.
5,921 in the 1990s
#843
Daniella Daniella means God is my judge, and the name is a legal claim — Daniel's story turns on false accusation and vindication, so the name states in advance who decides the case.
5,904 in the 1990s
#846
Shayna
5,836 in the 1990s
#847
Randi
5,834 in the 1990s
#850
Marilyn Marilyn is a girl's name usually read as a blend of Mary and Lyn.
5,766 in the 1990s
#851
Marlene Marlene was invented by the woman who made it famous — Marie Magdalene Dietrich contracted her own two names into one.
5,754 in the 1990s
#852
Kristi Kristi is the fifth spelling of this name to appear in our gap band — after Kristin, Kristen, Kristina and Kristine, all of them American-led despite the form being Scandinavian.
5,708 in the 1990s
#855
Donna Donna is a girl's name from the Italian word for a lady, a title used as a name.
5,676 in the 1990s
#857
Angelique Angelique means angelic, and the Greek root behind it simply means a messenger — the wings arrived much later in art, layered onto an ordinary word that described a person carrying news from one place to another.
5,661 in the 1990s
#858
Kourtney
5,654 in the 1990s
#862
Abbey
5,614 in the 1990s
#863
Tasha
5,608 in the 1990s
#864
Ciera
5,605 in the 1990s
#866
Iris Iris is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "rainbow."
5,589 in the 1990s
#867
Elisa Elisa means my God is an oath, shortened from Elizabeth, and France ranks it 202nd — its strongest market, ahead of England and Wales at 377th, Ireland at 382nd and the United States at 458th.
5,576 in the 1990s
#868
Kenya
5,561 in the 1990s
#869
Yvette Yvette is a girl's name from a Germanic word for the yew tree, by way of Breton.
5,545 in the 1990s
#870
Nora Nora is a girl's name that developed as a short form of longer names, chiefly Honora and Eleanor, and is now used independently.
5,542 in the 1990s
#872
Talia Talia is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "dew from God."
5,538 in the 1990s
#879
Christa
5,471 in the 1990s
#883
Elaine Elaine is a girl's name, the Old French form of Helen, whose meaning was never established.
5,441 in the 1990s
#884
Ericka
5,438 in the 1990s
#885
Rachelle
5,437 in the 1990s
#887
Meaghan
5,425 in the 1990s
#888
Misty Misty is a word name with no older root — it is the English weather word used directly, appearing in American records only from the 1940s and peaking within a single generation.
5,419 in the 1990s
#895
Kiera
5,392 in the 1990s
#899
Stefanie
5,344 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.