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Insights

US name trends by meaning

What a name means says a lot about the moment it was chosen in. We matched NameLore's thirty meaning themes — moon, fire, hope, strength and the rest — against official United States birth records, and followed each theme from 1980 through 2025.

The headline: Sun names are the fastest risers, up +449.9% since 2000 to 8,292 babies in 2025. The largest theme overall is Strength, given to 62,183 newborns in 2025 — while Ice names have faded the most, down 88.1% over the same period.

All 30 themes, ranked by growth

  1. Gold1,631+560.3%Aurelia
  2. Sun8,292+449.9%Lucia
  3. Fire11,304+346.6%Aiden
  4. Flower17,025+344.6%Violet
  5. Snow1,170+304.8%Winter
  6. Rebirth29,967+253.8%Aurora
  7. Moon14,033+195.9%Luna
  8. Star14,779+195.2%Nova
  9. Sky9,208+126.8%Leilani
  10. Death2,619+122.1%Kali
  11. Hope21,714+120.9%Asher
  12. Light39,597+115.5%Aurora
  13. Night26,050+81.5%Luna
  14. Peace28,906+68.6%Noah
  15. Wolf883+40.2%Zev
  16. Joy35,434+29.5%Asher
  17. Love32,016+13.9%David
  18. Warrior16,353−5.8%Wyatt
  19. Wisdom37,758−6.7%Sophia
  20. Dark18,000−19.8%Layla
  21. Earth12,438−24.1%Adam
  22. Freedom10,538−31.1%Charles
  23. Strength62,183−33.6%Ethan
  24. Storm9,918−39%Dylan
  25. Ocean14,924−46.8%Dylan
  26. Dream6,502−52.6%Maya
  27. Royalty29,257−55.9%Henry
  28. Water11,358−56.7%River
  29. Victory13,934−75%Victoria
  30. Ice304−88.1%Crystal

Method & source

The birth counts come from the US Social Security Administration's public baby-name dataset, which records every first name given to at least five babies of one sex in a year, nationally, and publishes the top-1000 ranks. Theme membership is NameLore's own curated mapping: each name is assigned to a theme only when its documented meaning genuinely traces to it.

A theme's yearly total is the sum of births across its member names (both sexes for unisex names). Growth compares the latest year, 2025, with 2000. Counts cover names that reached the national top 1000 only, so rare names contribute nothing to a theme's total even when they are in our collection.