Rare Unisex Names

What Makes a Name Rare

A number, on this site. A name is in the list above because 24 babies or fewer were given it in the United States in 2025 — that is the whole test, and you can see the figure under each name.

Everywhere else, "rare" is a judgement. Lists of unique baby names are written by people choosing names that strike them as unusual, which is why the same names appear on all of them and why a name can be called rare on one page and popular on the next. Neither is checkable.

Why Some Names Have No Number at All

Statistics offices leave out very small counts to protect the families involved — in the United States, any name given to fewer than five babies is not published. So a name missing from a year's records was given to somewhere between none and four children, and there is no way to tell which.

Those names are not in the list above, even though including them would make it far longer. A name with no measurement is not a rare name; it is a name we cannot honestly say anything about.

Are Rare Names a Good Idea?

That is not something records can settle. What they can tell you is what you would be choosing: a child with a name in the band above will almost certainly be the only one in their school with it, will spell it out on the phone for the rest of their life, and will not share it with anyone in their year.

Some parents want exactly that. If you are weighing it up, the most popular names page is the other end of the same measurement, taken the same way.

Rare Names by Origin and Style

The bands above can be narrowed further — a rare vintage name is a different search from a rare Irish one, and both filter on the same counts.