2000s Baby Names

45,773 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

#433
Jaxon Jaxon is a boy's name and a modern respelling of Jackson, meaning "son of Jack."
15,839 in the 2000s
#434
Grayson Grayson is a boy's name of English origin usually explained as "son of the grieve," a grieve being a steward or bailiff who managed an estate.
15,730 in the 2000s
#435
Elena Elena is a girl's name of Greek origin, the Italian, Spanish, and Russian form of Helen.
15,712 in the 2000s
#436
Nadia Nadia means hope, from the Russian word, and it charts in all seven markets — Ireland 293rd, Scotland 312th, Northern Ireland 329th, England and Wales 501st, the United States 565th and France 754th.
15,676 in the 2000s
#437
Kyra Kyra means lady, and the Greek behind it is the feminine of the word Christians use for the Lord — kyrios, as in kyrie eleison, which is the oldest Greek surviving in the Latin mass.
15,649 in the 2000s
#438
Pedro Pedro means stone, and the name records a nickname Jesus gave — Simon was renamed Cephas in Aramaic, which Greek translated as Petros, so the pun on rock survives through three languages.
15,633 in the 2000s
#439
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.
15,613 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
#441
Esmeralda Esmeralda is not the character's name in the novel — Hugo's girl is christened Agnès and called Esmeralda for the green amulet she wears, so the name most readers know her by is a nickname.
15,502 in the 2000s
#442
Camden Camden is a boy's name of English origin meaning "enclosed valley."
15,493 in the 2000s
#443
Ruben Ruben is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "behold, a son."
15,401 in the 2000s
#444
Bethany Bethany is a village outside Jerusalem, and its meaning is contested — house of figs and house of the poor are both proposed.
15,382 in the 2000s
#445
Cayden Cayden charts in all seven markets and has no etymology at all — it belongs to the -aiden rhyming family invented in America in the 1990s, alongside Kaiden which is written up separately here.
15,371 in the 2000s
#446
Aliyah Aliyah is a girl's name of Hebrew and Arabic origin meaning "ascent" or "exalted," and the two languages arrived at it separately from cognate roots.
15,347 in the 2000s
#447
Dominick Dominick means of the Lord, and it was given to children born on a Sunday — dies dominica is the Lord's day, and the name records the day of birth rather than a hope for the child.
15,344 in the 2000s
#448
Keegan Keegan descends from a pagan god, not a small flame — Aodh was the Irish deity of fire and the sun, and the diminutive gloss softens a name that originally invoked him.
15,335 in the 2000s
#449
Amaya Amaya is a girl's name with several unrelated origins.
15,265 in the 2000s
#450
Cynthia Cynthia is a girl's name that began as a title for the moon goddess — it means she of Mount Cynthus, the peak on Delos where Artemis was said to have been born.
15,183 in the 2000s
#451
Rafael Rafael is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God heals."
15,093 in the 2000s
#452
Zane Zane peaked in 2018, later than almost any name in this group, and it entered American use as a surname — Zane Grey's westerns carried a family name that traces back to the founder of Zanesville, Ohio.
14,950 in the 2000s
#453
Brett Brett means a Breton — someone from Brittany, which is named for the Britons who fled there when the Anglo-Saxons arrived.
14,937 in the 2000s
#454
Troy Troy is a boy's name with two independent sources — an Irish surname meaning foot soldier, and the ancient city.
14,831 in the 2000s
#455
Malik Malik means king, and the Arabic distinguishes two words a single letter apart — malik is a king, mālik an owner, and one of God's names in the Qur'an is the second rather than the first.
14,815 in the 2000s
#456
Roman Roman is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "citizen of Rome," from Romanus.
14,774 in the 2000s
#457
Jakob
14,765 in the 2000s
#458
Griffin Griffin peaked in 2023, more recently than any other name in this group, and it is not named for the beast — the Welsh Gruffudd came first, and the resemblance to the griffin is coincidence.
14,723 in the 2000s
#459
Vivian Vivian is a name of Latin origin meaning "alive" or "lively," from vivus.
14,712 in the 2000s
#460
Monica Monica is a girl's name whose meaning is unknown, and whose saint — the mother of Augustine — came from Roman North Africa, so the name may be Berber rather than Latin or Greek at all.
14,705 in the 2000s
#461
Chance Chance means a falling, and the falling was dice — the Old French cheance describes how they land, from the Latin cadere, to fall, which also gives cadence, decay and accident.
14,686 in the 2000s
#462
Santiago Santiago is a boy's name of Spanish origin meaning "Saint James."
14,637 in the 2000s
#463
Elise Elise is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is my oath," a short form of Elizabeth.
14,581 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
#465
Keira Keira rose twice, two years apart, and both markets moved together — American births went 433 in 2003 to 1,244 in 2004, then on to 3,022 by 2006, with England and Wales tracing the same two steps in the same years.
14,527 in the 2000s
#466
Frank Frank is a boy's name of Germanic origin meaning "free man" or "Frank."
14,480 in the 2000s
#467
Laila Laila means night, and the romance built on it ran for a thousand years before Clapton — Layla and Majnun is a Persian retelling of an Arabic story, and it is the source both of the song and of the name's spread.
14,457 in the 2000s
#468
Kai Kai is a name that exists independently in many unrelated languages.
14,393 in the 2000s
#469
Johnny Johnny is a boy's name, the pet form of John, meaning God is gracious.
14,390 in the 2000s
#470
Shannon Shannon is a name from Ireland's longest river, and it is 86 percent female on record.
14,390 in the 2000s
#471
Brenda Brenda is a girl's name from an Old Norse word for a sword or a torch, and it appears to have been invented for a novel — Walter Scott used it in The Pirate in 1822, and no earlier use is recorded.
14,389 in the 2000s
#472
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.
14,376 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 on record, one of the most divided names on this site — Spanish reads it as James, and English hears it as a spelling of Jamie.
14,296 in the 2000s
#475
Kendra Kendra has no settled origin — a feminine of Kenneth, a Welsh compound meaning greatest champion, and an invention from Ken plus a fashionable ending are all proposed, and none is established.
14,258 in the 2000s
#476
Braxton Braxton is a boy's name of Old English origin meaning "Bracc's settlement."
14,212 in the 2000s
#477
Meghan Meghan means pearl, through Megan and Margaret, and the h is an American addition — Welsh spells it Megan, and the extra letter appeared in twentieth-century American use with no basis in the original.
14,099 in the 2000s
#478
Makenna
14,032 in the 2000s
#479
Haylee
14,019 in the 2000s
#480
Heather Heather is a girl's name taken directly from the flowering shrub that covers Scottish and northern English moorland.
14,001 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.