Nineties Names

The 1990s peak group. Many are the parents' names now rather than the grandparents', which puts them at the bottom of their curve — the least fashionable a name gets before it starts climbing again.

Rankings for

34 names, uncommon — 100 to 499 a year, in United States

Very Rare Rare Uncommon

Girls Boys Unisex

Sierra Sierra means a mountain range, and the Spanish word is literally a saw — ranges were named for the jagged sawtooth profile they cut against the sky.
Girl Spanish 476 in 2025
Cassandra Cassandra is a girl's name from Greek myth, borne by a prophet cursed to see the future and never be believed.
Girl Greek 463 in 2025
Shelby Shelby is a girl's name from an English place name of Norse formation meaning a willow farm.
Girl English 485 in 2025
Miranda Miranda was coined by Shakespeare for The Tempest around 1611, from the Latin for to be wondered at.
Girl Latin 437 in 2025
Briana Briana is a feminine of Brian, and it first appears in Spenser's Faerie Queene in 1590 — which makes it one of very few names whose earliest recorded use is a specific poem.
Girl Irish 431 in 2025
Trevor Trevor is a Welsh place name meaning big settlement, and the first element is the tre that begins a great many Cornish and Welsh place names — Tregaron, Trelawney, Treharris and several hundred others besides.
Boy Welsh 400 in 2025
Mikayla Mikayla respells Michaela, and the Hebrew behind both is a question — who is like God — whose expected answer is nobody.
Girl American 364 in 2025
Karina Karina means pure or beloved depending on which parent it takes, and neither has a settled meaning — Catherine's Greek original was never derived, and the Latin route gives a different sense entirely.
Girl Scandinavian 363 in 2025
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 340 in 2025
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 340 in 2025
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 349 in 2025
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 323 in 2025
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 319 in 2025
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 302 in 2025
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 301 in 2025
Anaïs Anaïs has no settled origin — Occitan, a form of Anne, and a Greek borrowing are all proposed.
Girl French 310 in 2025
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 285 in 2025
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 281 in 2025
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 294 in 2025
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 245 in 2025
Mathew Mathew drops a t from Matthew, and the doubled t was never in the Hebrew — it entered through the Greek and Latin spellings, so the shorter form is arguably closer to the original.
Boy English 235 in 2025
Carly Carly means free man, and the Germanic word named a free peasant rather than a lord — so a name that now reads as light and modern began at the bottom of the free classes.
Girl English 248 in 2025
Kara Kara means beloved, from the Italian and Latin for dear — and a separate Norse Kara exists as the name of a valkyrie, so the same spelling covers two entirely unrelated names.
Girl Italian 226 in 2025
Katelyn Katelyn is one of five respellings that divided the same sound in the 1990s, and Ireland ranks it 292nd — far above the United States at 1078th, the reverse of how its sister spelling Kaitlyn behaves.
Girl Irish 225 in 2025
Erika Erika means ever-ruler, the feminine of Erik — and it is also the botanical name for heather, which is a separate Greek word that happens to match.
Girl Scandinavian 213 in 2025
Clarissa Clarissa means bright, and it names one of the longest novels in English — Richardson's Clarissa runs to about a million words, which makes it longer than the whole of Proust in most editions.
Girl Latin 212 in 2025
Allyson Allyson descends from Alice by way of a French diminutive, and it is not Alice plus son — the ending is the Old French -on, the same one behind Marion, and nothing in it refers to a child.
Girl English 203 in 2025
Kasey Kasey means vigilant, and it is one of the more evenly divided names on this site — 73 percent of the births in our records are female, against an Irish surname that was of course carried by both.
Unisex Irish 285 in 2025
Bria Bria is a girl's name usually explained as a short form of Brianna, though an Italian source is also proposed.
Girl Irish 199 in 2025
Alisha Alisha means noble, and it is British and Irish rather than American — England and Wales 376th, Ireland 381st and Northern Ireland 407th all rank it far above the United States at 1229th.
Girl English 183 in 2025
Tori Tori means victory through Victoria, and a separate Japanese tori means bird — the two are unrelated, and the shrine gates called torii are a third word again.
Girl English 174 in 2025
Mercedes Mercedes is a plural, and it means wages before it means mercies — the Latin merces is payment, and the Spanish title Our Lady of Mercies turned a commercial word into a devotional one.
Girl Spanish 150 in 2025
Marissa Marissa is usually explained as of the sea, but that reading comes from the Latin stella maris — a title of the Virgin built on a mistranslation of Miriam that scholars abandoned centuries ago.
Girl Italian 123 in 2025
Courtney Courtney is a name from a Norman family whose surname is usually read as short nose, though a place-name derivation competes.
Girl Norman 116 in 2025

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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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Nineties Names

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