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.

Every name here is placed by how its recent years in the birth records compare with its earlier ones — so the list moves as the records do.

Rankings for

21,065 names, most popular first in United States

Very Rare Rare Uncommon

Girls Boys Unisex

Janiyah Peaked in 2009 · 13,812 births since 1995
Girl #784 in US
Darius Darius means holding firm the good, and we know that because the king said so — the Behistun inscription has Darius the Great explain his own name and reign in three languages, carved on a cliff face.
Boy Persian #788 in US
Calum Calum is a boy's name, the Scottish Gaelic form of Latin Columba, meaning dove.
Boy Scottish Gaelic #799 in US
Kaitlyn Kaitlyn is a girl's name that respells the Irish Caitlín — which came into Irish from French, and into French from Greek.
Girl Irish #801 in US
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.
Girl English #802 in US
Ty Ty has no source of its own — it shortens Tyler, Tyrone and Tyson, three names with nothing in common, so which one a given Ty belongs to cannot be read off the name.
Boy English #811 in US
Brock Brock means badger, and it is one of the oldest animal words in English — a Celtic borrowing that entered Old English before the Norman Conquest and survives in dialect to this day.
Boy English #813 in US
Yahir Peaked in 2003 · 12,481 births since 1992
Boy #814 in US
Kelsey Kelsey is a girl's name from an English place name, and its two proposed meanings — ship's victory and Cenel's island — have nothing in common.
Girl English #815 in US
Alberto Alberto means bright nobility, and both halves are compliments — the Germanic joins a word for noble descent to one meaning bright or famous, with nothing descriptive about the person at all.
Boy Italian #820 in US
Alfredo Alfredo means counsel of the elves, and the elves were taken seriously — Anglo-Saxon naming treated them as beings whose advice was worth invoking, not as decoration for a children's story.
Boy Italian #822 in US
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.
Girl Greek #828 in US
Drake Peaked in 2010 · 39,379 births since 1918
Boy #828 in US
Michaela Michaela is a question, not a statement — the Hebrew behind it asks who is like God, which was a rhetorical challenge rather than a claim, and the answer it expects is nobody.
Girl Hebrew #841 in US
Conor Conor is a boy's name of Irish origin meaning "lover of hounds," from the Irish Conchobhar.
Boy Irish #844 in US
Léa Léa is a girl's name of Hebrew origin, the French form of Leah, the elder sister of Rachel in Genesis.
Girl French #848 in US
Braylon Peaked in 2009 · 19,240 births since 1981
Boy #849 in US
Chelsea Chelsea is a girl's name from a London district whose name means chalk landing place — a wharf where chalk was unloaded from boats on the Thames.
Girl English #852 in US
Haley Haley means hay meadow, from an English place name.
Girl English #861 in US
Conner Conner means desiring hounds rather than loving them — the Irish joins a word for a hound or wolf to one meaning desire, and the softer lover of hounds gloss smooths over what was a warrior's name.
Boy Irish #864 in US
Brycen Peaked in 2011 · 14,638 births since 1976
Boy #868 in US
Adrianna Adrianna means from Hadria, and the sea took its name from the town rather than the other way round — the Adriatic is called after a small Italian settlement that is now several miles inland.
Girl Latin #873 in US
Kylee Kylee has no agreed source, and it is not a feminine of Kyle — the -lee ending was attached to a Ky- opening in twentieth-century America, and any Gaelic meaning offered for it arrived afterward.
Girl American #875 in US
Ernesto Ernesto means serious in the deadly sense — the Germanic eornost named vigor in a fight, and the modern in earnest still keeps that force, meaning for real rather than in play.
Boy Italian #879 in US
Rebekah Rebekah is the spelling the King James Bible uses for the Old Testament, while the New Testament in the same book uses Rebecca — one translation, two spellings, and English inherited both.
Girl Hebrew #885 in US
Tilly Tilly is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "mighty in battle."
Girl Germanic #886 in US
Megan Megan is a girl's name, the Welsh pet form of Margaret, from a Greek word for pearl that reached Europe from Persian.
Girl Welsh #888 in US
Trey Trey means three, and it is a card and dice word — the trey is the three-spot, which is why the name attached itself to sons who were the third to carry a family name.
Boy English #889 in US
Anaïs Anaïs has no settled origin — Occitan, a form of Anne, and a Greek borrowing are all proposed.
Girl French #892 in US
Violette Violette is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "violet," and in France it belongs to an agent executed at Ravensbrück at twenty-three.
Girl French #894 in US
Guillermo Peaked in 1998 · 32,626 births since 1885
Boy Spanish #901 in US
Kael Peaked in 2025 · 6,551 births since 1969
Boy Irish #904 in US
Nataly Peaked in 2008 · 15,697 births since 1966
Girl #907 in US
Giuliana Peaked in 2012 · 14,992 births since 1958
Girl Italian #915 in US
Issac Peaked in 2008 · 27,134 births since 1880
Boy Hebrew #916 in US
Cheyenne Cheyenne is not the Cheyenne people's own name for themselves — it is a Sioux word meaning red speakers, applied from outside.
Girl Native American #921 in US
Brittany Brittany is a girl's name taken from the French region, which is named for British settlers who crossed the Channel in late antiquity.
Girl English #928 in US
Darian Peaked in 1994 · 25,896 births since 1939
Unisex #928 in US
Dillon Dillon has two unrelated sources that English cannot separate — an Irish surname of uncertain meaning and the Welsh Dylan, a sea god from the Mabinogi.
Boy Irish #930 in US
Salma Peaked in 2003 · 25,552 births since 1962
Girl Arabic #937 in US
Madalyn Peaked in 2008 · 24,121 births since 1899
Girl Serbian #947 in US
Mitchell Mitchell is a boy's name from a medieval English form of Michael, meaning who is like God — though a second and quite separate source exists from an old word simply meaning big.
Boy English #952 in US
Felipe Peaked in 1993 · 33,690 births since 1880
Boy Greek #956 in US
Anika Peaked in 2006 · 22,080 births since 1961
Girl Dutch #958 in US
Yasmin Peaked in 2006 · 35,796 births since 1949
Girl Persian #959 in US
Aldo Peaked in 2007 · 21,752 births since 1906
Boy #960 in US
Colten Peaked in 2009 · 17,780 births since 1978
Boy #965 in US
Quentin Quentin is a boy's name meaning fifth — a Roman birth-order name, given to a fifth child or one born in the fifth month.
Boy French #967 in US

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A style is our reading of a name. A decade is the register — the names children were actually given, in order, with the counts.

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