2000s Baby Names

3,933 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

#22
Alexis Alexis is a Greek name meaning helper or defender, and it is genuinely split by country: a boys' name in France, where it ranks 256th, and majority female in the United States.
158,863 in the 2000s
#29
Jordan Jordan is a name from the river, whose Hebrew name Yarden means "to descend" or "flow down" — the Jordan drops sharply from its source to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the earth's land surface.
144,371 in the 2000s
#44
Angel Angel is a name of Greek origin meaning "messenger," from angelos.
119,779 in the 2000s
#46
Taylor Taylor is an occupational surname meaning one who cuts cloth, now used mostly for girls at 72 percent female.
118,667 in the 2000s
#78
Riley Riley is a name with two origins that converged. The Irish line comes from Ó Raghallaigh, an Anglicized surname, while the English line names a place meaning "rye clearing," from the Old English ryge and leah.
85,155 in the 2000s
#83
Morgan Morgan is a Welsh name meaning sea-born, and it charts in all seven markets we track within a range of just over three hundred places — one of the most evenly distributed names on this site.
78,594 in the 2000s
#116
Hayden Hayden is a name of Old English origin meaning "hay valley" or "hedged hill."
60,536 in the 2000s
#119
Avery Avery is a name of English origin meaning "elf counsel," derived from the Norman French form of the Germanic name Alberich.
57,562 in the 2000s
#123
Jaden Jaden is a modern American name with a genuine biblical original behind it — Jadon appears once in Nehemiah, as a man who helped rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and almost nothing else is known of him.
56,637 in the 2000s
#138
Peyton Peyton is a name of Old English origin meaning "Pæga's settlement."
52,448 in the 2000s
#174
Bailey Bailey is a name of Old French origin meaning "bailiff" or "steward."
43,773 in the 2000s
#186
Dakota Dakota means friend or ally in the Dakota language, and it is one of very few widely used names taken from an Indigenous North American language.
40,585 in the 2000s
#190
Parker Parker is a name of English origin meaning "park keeper."
39,897 in the 2000s
#194
Jocelyn Jocelyn began as a man's name for a Germanic tribe — the Gauts — and turned female in twentieth-century America. About 90 percent of the births in our records are now female.
38,484 in the 2000s
#204
Ashton Ashton is a name of Old English origin meaning "ash tree settlement."
37,231 in the 2000s
#206
Payton Payton means Pæga's farm, from an English place name — and it is 71 percent female in our records, having crossed over from an entirely masculine surname within a generation.
36,376 in the 2000s
#236
Leslie Leslie is a Scottish place name turned surname turned given name, and it has crossed sexes: about 71 percent of the births in our records are female, though the name began firmly male and remains so in Britain.
32,022 in the 2000s
#240
Aubrey Aubrey is a name of Germanic origin meaning "elf ruler."
31,053 in the 2000s
#244
Micah Micah is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "who is like Yahweh?" — a rhetorical question expecting the answer that nobody is.
30,658 in the 2000s
#265
Skylar Skylar is a name of Dutch origin meaning "scholar."
28,067 in the 2000s
#291
Kendall Kendall means the valley of the River Kent, and Scotland ranks it 309th — above the United States at 329th, which is unusual for a name whose modern use is almost entirely American.
26,058 in the 2000s
#305
Skyler Skyler is Dutch and means a scholar — it respells Schuyler, a surname carried by one of New York's founding families, and it has nothing to do with the sky despite the spelling.
24,260 in the 2000s
#309
Devon Devon is the English county, named for the Dumnonii — a Celtic people whose own name may mean the deep ones, possibly referring to mining.
24,094 in the 2000s
#322
Kelly Kelly is a name from the Irish surname Ó Ceallaigh, borne almost entirely by men for most of its history and now 86 percent female in our data.
23,158 in the 2000s
#331
Reagan Reagan means little king, and our data shows the opposite of what most people assume — American births more than halved during the first two years of Ronald Reagan's presidency and did not take off until a decade after he left office.
22,400 in the 2000s
#344
Casey Casey is a name of Irish origin meaning "vigilant" or "watchful."
21,382 in the 2000s
#351
Jaylen Jaylen has no etymology, and the meanings offered for it contradict each other — healer, tranquil, devoted to Jove and supplanter all appear online, which is what happens when sources fill a blank.
21,030 in the 2000s
#358
Ariel Ariel means lion of God, and The Little Mermaid moved it hard and briefly.
20,760 in the 2000s
#360
Jamie Jamie is a unisex name of Hebrew origin, a Scottish diminutive of James meaning "supplanter" or "holder of the heel."
20,653 in the 2000s
#362
Reese Reese is a name of Welsh origin meaning "ardour" or "enthusiasm."
20,262 in the 2000s
#370
Jaiden Jaiden belongs to the -aiden rhyming family invented in America in the 1990s, and the Hebrew meanings offered for it are attached to a coinage — thankful one and God will judge cannot both be right.
19,767 in the 2000s
#384
Drew Drew shortens Andrew, meaning manly, and there is a second unrelated Drew from a Germanic word for a ghost or phantom.
18,916 in the 2000s
#427
Camryn
16,273 in the 2000s
#440
Quinn Quinn is a name of Irish origin, anglicized from Ó Cuinn, meaning "descendant of Conn."
15,531 in the 2000s
#464
Guadalupe Guadalupe is half Arabic and half Latin — wadi, a valley or river, joined to a word for a wolf.
14,566 in the 2000s
#469
Shannon Shannon is a name from Ireland's longest river, and it is 86 percent female in our records.
14,390 in the 2000s
#473
Zion Zion is a name of Hebrew origin naming the hill in Jerusalem, and by extension the city and the promised land itself.
14,346 in the 2000s
#474
Jaime Jaime is 41 percent female in our records, one of the most genuinely divided names on this site — Spanish reads it as James, and English hears it as a spelling of Jamie.
14,296 in the 2000s
#501
Harley Harley is a name of Old English origin meaning "hare's meadow."
13,326 in the 2000s
#503
Amari Amari is a name with several competing origins: the Yoruba for "strength," the Arabic ʿāmir meaning "prosperous," and the Hebrew amar, "to say" — and reference works disagree because all three are genuine.
13,212 in the 2000s
#511
Chandler Chandler means a candle maker, and the trade left a grander word behind — the same French root gives chandelier, so the humblest medieval occupation names the most ornate fitting in the house.
12,968 in the 2000s
#520
Justice
12,747 in the 2000s
#543
Kamryn
12,059 in the 2000s
#548
London London is a girls' name in America and barely used in England — 81 percent of the births in our records are female, it ranks 431st in the United States, and 3355th in the country containing the city it names.
11,985 in the 2000s
#553
Eden Eden is a name of Hebrew origin meaning "delight" or "pleasure," from the garden of Genesis.
11,807 in the 2000s
#556
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
#557
Rylan Rylan has no documented source, and the little king gloss repeated for it is unsupported — the likeliest reading is rye land, an English place name, but even that is not established.
11,765 in the 2000s
#564
Jadyn
11,504 in the 2000s

What made a 2000s name

Nothing about the sound of it. A name is on this page because children in the United States were registered with it between 2000 and 2009, and its position is simply how many. Every list of "2000s 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.