Fading Names

Names on the way down. Not a warning: a falling name is a name fewer children in the class will share, and roughly half of the vintage list spent decades here first.

Rankings for

21,065 names, most popular first in the United States

Very Rare Rare Uncommon

Girls Boys Unisex

Mya Mya is a girl's name, usually a respelling of Maya or Mia, and the sources disagree completely about what it means.
Girl French #443 in US
Mariah Mariah shows the sharpest single-artist effect on record.
Girl English #448 in US
Dalton Dalton means the settlement in the valley, and Northern Ireland ranks it 305th — above the United States at 448th, which is unexpected for a name whose modern use is almost entirely American.
Boy English #448 in US
Alyssa Alyssa is a girl's name from the flower alyssum, whose Greek name means without madness — the plant was believed to cure rabies.
Girl Greek #453 in US
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.
Boy Spanish #456 in US
Jake Jake is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "supplanter," a short form of Jacob that became a name in its own right.
Boy English #457 in US
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.
Girl Italian #458 in US
Fabian Fabian means bean grower, and the general who carried it gave English a word for winning by refusing to fight — Fabian tactics, and the Fabian Society that named itself after his patience.
Boy Latin #468 in US
Alexandria Alexandria is the city before it is the name — Alexander founded it in 331 BC, and the feminine given name was formed from the place rather than directly from Alexandra, which took a different route.
Girl Greek #474 in US
Tanner Tanner names one of the most unpleasant medieval trades — tanneries used urine and dog feces to cure hides, and were forced to the downwind edge of every town by law as well as by smell.
Boy English #475 in US
Camryn Camryn is a unisex name, used mostly for American girls, and it's a modern spelling of Cameron.
Unisex Scottish #478 in US
Ruben Ruben is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "behold, a son."
Boy Hebrew #480 in US
Alivia Peaked in 2009 · 37,834 births since 1952
Girl #484 in US
Aniyah Aniyah is a girl's name of disputed origin.
Girl Disputed #485 in US
Edgar Edgar is a boy's name meaning wealthy spear, and it is one of very few Old English names still in wide use.
Boy English #487 in US
Brooklynn Peaked in 2011 · 41,650 births since 1975
Girl Dutch #488 in US
Collin Collin doubles the L of Colin, and the name underneath has two unrelated sources — a French pet form of Nicolas, and the Scottish Gaelic Cailean, which share nothing but a spelling.
Boy American #493 in US
Donovan Donovan means dark brown, and the Irish surname behind it belonged to a king who backed the wrong side — the Uí Donnabháin lost their lands after opposing Brian Boru in the tenth century.
Boy Irish #496 in US
Bianca Bianca means white, and France ranks it 242nd — ahead of Ireland at 373rd, the United States at 501st, England and Wales at 548th and Scotland at 742nd.
Girl Italian #501 in US
Kyle Kyle is a boy's name of Scottish Gaelic origin meaning "narrow strait," taken from a district of Ayrshire.
Boy Scottish #508 in US
Johnathan Johnathan is a misspelling that became a name — it inserts an h into Jonathan by confusion with John, and the two are different Hebrew names that only look related.
Boy English #509 in US
Corbin Corbin means little raven, and it began as a description of hair — Norman bynames used black birds for black-haired people, which is the same logic behind the Irish names built on the word for dark.
Boy French #512 in US
Alexis Alexis is a Greek name meaning helper or defender, and it is split by country: a boys' name in France, where it ranks 256th, and majority female in the United States.
Unisex Greek #513 in US
Marcos Marcos means dedicated to Mars, and the god behind it was not only a war god — Mars presided over agriculture too, which is coherent once you notice that farming and fighting were the same men's seasonal work.
Boy Spanish #516 in US
Kate Kate is a girl's name of Greek origin, a short form of Katherine whose meaning has never been established.
Girl English #522 in US
Jayla Jayla is a modern American coinage with no source, and its 2006 peak of 3,417 births is the largest single-year figure in this group — a name can be very popular and still have no history at all.
Girl American #529 in US
Tyson Tyson means son of the firebrand, and it began as an insult — the Old French tison named a hot-tempered man, so the surname records a reputation the family did not choose.
Boy English #531 in US
Dorian Dorian names a Greek people rather than a quality, and Oscar Wilde put it into use — The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in 1890 and the name has never been separable from it since.
Boy Greek #539 in US
Cassidy Cassidy means curly-haired, from an Irish surname — and Scotland ranks it 416th, above Northern Ireland at 464th and the United States at 541st, with Ireland itself back at 807th.
Girl Irish #541 in US
Heaven Heaven is a girl's name from the English word for paradise, from the Old English heofon.
Girl English #543 in US
Devin Devin is a name from an Irish surname, and its meanings are contested — poet, and a word for a stag, are both proposed from different Irish originals.
Boy Irish #548 in US
Drew Drew shortens Andrew, meaning manly, and there is a second unrelated Drew from a Germanic word for a ghost or phantom.
Unisex English #554 in US
Armando Armando means army man, and it is the same name as Herman — one Germanic compound that reached Spanish through the Visigoths and English through the Normans, ending up unrecognisably different.
Boy Spanish #556 in US
Saul Saul means asked for, and the Hebrew Bible appears to have attached his wordplay to the wrong man — the puns on asking in the birth of Samuel fit Sha'ul far better than they fit Shemuel.
Boy Hebrew #557 in US
Lilian Lilian is the most evenly split name in this whole sweep — 46 percent of recorded births are female, because France uses it for boys and the English-speaking markets use it for girls.
Unisex English #561 in US
Garrett Garrett means spear-strength or spear-rule, and it descends from two different Germanic names that medieval English speakers could no longer tell apart.
Boy English #564 in US
Izabella Peaked in 2010 · 35,533 births since 1987
Girl #564 in US
Andy Andy means manly, and the Greek root is the ordinary word for a man — so Andrew is one of the few apostles carrying a Greek name rather than a Hebrew or Aramaic one.
Boy English #565 in US
Makayla Makayla is one of a large family of respellings of Michaela, and the name underneath is a question — Michael means who is like God, expecting the answer nobody.
Girl American #567 in US
Roberto Roberto means bright fame, the Italian and Spanish form of Robert, and both halves of the compound mean roughly the same thing — which is normal in Germanic naming rather than a redundancy.
Boy Italian #569 in US
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.
Girl English #570 in US
Enrique Enrique means ruler of the estate, and the home in it is territorial rather than domestic — the Germanic element named the land a lord held, not the house he lived in.
Boy Spanish #571 in US
Emanuel Emanuel began as a sign rather than a name — Isaiah tells Ahaz that a child will be called God with us as proof of a prophecy, and the phrase became a personal name only afterward.
Boy Hebrew #574 in US
Mckenzie Mckenzie means son of Coinneach, and the z was never a z — it replaced a lost Scots letter called yogh, so the name has been mispronounced into its own spelling.
Girl Scottish #576 in US
Kyla Kyla means a narrow strait if it comes from Kyle, and the Scottish word behind that names a specific kind of water — a channel between an island and the mainland, as at Kyle of Lochalsh.
Girl Scottish #580 in US
Seth Seth is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "appointed" or "placed," given to Adam and Eve's third son after Cain killed Abel.
Boy Hebrew #581 in US
Makenna Peaked in 2005 · 36,240 births since 1982
Girl #593 in US
Mohammed Mohammed is a boy's name of Arabic origin meaning "praiseworthy."
Boy Arabic #595 in US

Or Browse by Decade

A decade page lists the names children were given in those years, in order, with the counts.

Search Names

Fading Names

Or Browse by Decade

Related Styles