2000s Baby Names

25,403 names were given to children in the United States between 2000 and 2009, 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

#532
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.
12,440 in the 2000s
#534
Alaina Alaina descends from a name nobody can translate — the Breton Alan has been read as rock, handsome and deer, and none of the three has ever been established.
12,350 in the 2000s
#535
Lindsay Lindsay and Lindsey are the same place — a district of Lincolnshire that was effectively an island in fen.
12,333 in the 2000s
#537
Piper Piper is a girl's name of Old English origin meaning "pipe player."
12,295 in the 2000s
#540
Katelynn
12,199 in the 2000s
#541
Heaven Heaven is a girl's name from the English word for paradise, from the Old English heofon.
12,097 in the 2000s
#542
Kira Kira has three unrelated sources — the Irish for dark, a Russian feminine of the Persian for lord, and a Japanese word for glittering — and nothing in the spelling tells you which one a given Kira belongs to.
12,096 in the 2000s
#544
Ciara Ciara is a girl's name of Irish origin meaning "dark" or "black-haired," the feminine of Ciarán.
12,046 in the 2000s
#547
Cecilia Cecilia is a girl's name of Latin origin from the Roman family name Caecilius, which derives from caecus, meaning blind.
11,989 in the 2000s
#549
Aniyah Aniyah is a girl's name of disputed origin.
11,868 in the 2000s
#550
Kailey
11,846 in the 2000s
#551
Stella Stella is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "star."
11,843 in the 2000s
#555
Camille Camille is a unisex name of Latin origin, from a Roman word for a young attendant at religious ceremonies.
11,777 in the 2000s
#556
Kayleigh Kayleigh is far larger in England than its American figures suggest — 1,206 births in England and Wales in 1996 against a US peak of 1,450, in a country with about a fifth of the population.
11,777 in the 2000s
#558
Kaitlin Kaitlin reached English through Irish, not from it — Catherine went into Old French as Cateline, into Irish as Caitlín, and back out again respelled.
11,655 in the 2000s
#560
Holly Holly is a girl's name of Old English origin taken from the tree, from holegn.
11,605 in the 2000s
#561
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.
11,579 in the 2000s
#563
Brooklynn
11,510 in the 2000s
#565
Esther Esther is a girl's name usually connected to the Persian word for star, and possibly to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar.
11,488 in the 2000s
#567
April April is a girl's name taken from the month, whose Latin name probably means to open — the month when buds open.
11,425 in the 2000s
#568
Paris Paris has two unrelated sources — the Trojan prince and the French city — and France barely uses it, ranking the name 7,188th while the United States has it at 592nd and 80 percent female.
11,412 in the 2000s
#569
Miriam Miriam is the origin of Mary, Maria, Marie, Maureen, Marion and Molly — the largest name family in Europe — and it still charts in all seven markets, with its top four inside 46 places of each other.
11,361 in the 2000s
#570
Alivia
11,359 in the 2000s
#574
Asia
11,269 in the 2000s
#576
Claudia Claudia means lame, and it comes from one of Rome's most powerful families.
11,225 in the 2000s
#577
Eleanor Eleanor is a girl's name that traces back to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the twelfth-century queen of France and later England, whose own name, Aliénor, is widely explained as "the other Aenor," distinguishing her from her mother, also named Aenor.
11,192 in the 2000s
#578
Tatiana Tatiana descends from a Roman family name of Sabine origin, and Shakespeare's fairy queen is a different word — Titania comes from the Titans, so the two are unrelated despite constant confusion.
11,157 in the 2000s
#583
Carolina Carolina means free man, and two American states carry it — both Carolinas are named for Charles I in Latin, so a Germanic word for a peasant ended up on the map through a king.
11,073 in the 2000s
#584
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.
11,054 in the 2000s
#589
Nancy Nancy is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "grace."
10,984 in the 2000s
#590
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.
10,927 in the 2000s
#591
Callie Callie is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "beautiful."
10,916 in the 2000s
#594
Anastasia Anastasia is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "resurrection."
10,864 in the 2000s
#595
Melody Melody is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "song" or "singing," from melodia.
10,848 in the 2000s
#597
Eliana Eliana is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God has answered" or "my God has answered."
10,715 in the 2000s
#599
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.
10,692 in the 2000s
#600
Sienna Sienna is a girl's name from the Italian city of Siena, and by way of it from the reddish-brown earth pigment mined nearby.
10,690 in the 2000s
#604
Serena Serena has the most evenly spread ranking on this site — Scotland 298th, Ireland 310th, the United States 325th, France 330th and England and Wales 381st, five markets inside 83 places of each other.
10,634 in the 2000s
#606
Madeleine Madeleine is a girl's name meaning "of Magdala," a fishing town on the Sea of Galilee, and it is a place name rather than a description.
10,628 in the 2000s
#609
Celeste Celeste is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "heavenly."
10,561 in the 2000s
#613
Julissa
10,528 in the 2000s
#617
Ashlynn
10,474 in the 2000s
#624
Jayda
10,136 in the 2000s
#625
Alayna Alayna is a girl's name, a modern respelling that sits between several older names.
10,110 in the 2000s
#626
Heidi Heidi is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "noble one."
10,102 in the 2000s
#628
Aniya
10,086 in the 2000s
#629
Kathleen Kathleen is a girl's name anglicizing the Irish Caitlín, a form of Catherine, and it inherits that name's unknown meaning.
10,065 in the 2000s
#630
Britney
10,016 in the 2000s

What Made a 2000s Name

Children in the United States were registered with it between 2000 and 2009. A name's position here is how many of them were.

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.