State Capital Baby Names

Jackson

English

"son of Jack"

Jackson is one of those names that's much more popular than you think, coming in near the top of our annual Playground Analysis, which ranks names by grouping all their spellings together. Last year,…

Lincoln

English

"town by the pool"

Lincoln cracked the Top 50 for boys' names for the first time in 2016, more than 150 years after the death of its most famous bearer. This is especially remarkable because, as crazy as it seems now,…

Austin

English, shortened form of Augustine, Latin

"great, magnificent"

Austin is one of the most attractive city names for babies , with an appealing southwestern feel and place-name panache. Austin has been an Anglo-Saxon surname and a first name since medieval times.…

Carson

English and Scottish surname

"son of the marsh dwellers"

Carson is one of the most long-running popular androgynous baby names , with a dash of the Wild West via the legendary Missouri frontiersman Kit Carson. Dating back to when it was the name of Nancy…

Nash

English

"by the ash tree"

Nash is an English surname whose sound puts it right in step with currently trendy names like Cash, Dash and Ash. It first came to prominence via TV character Nash Bridges, portrayed by Don Johnson…

Paul

Latin

"small"

Paul is an ancient name for boys -- popular in Roman and medieval times -- that's not very fashionable now, which can work in its favor, scarcity balancing simplicity. To the thousands of girls who…

Saint

English word name

"saint"

Saint as a descriptive word name was first chosen by rocker Pete Wentz for his younger son (baby brother is Bronx), and now Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have catapulted the name into the celebrity…

Phoenix

Arizona place-name and Greek

"dark red"

Effortlessly cool with a hint of the mystical, Phoenix rolls a lot of trends into one: it's a place-name and a bird name, it ends in the stylish letter x, it's got in-built nicknames, and it's unisex…

Denver

English or French place-name and surname

"green valley; from Anvers"

Before there was Aspen, Denver was the Colorado city name of choice, and it reentered the US Top 1000 in 2015 after a 14 year absence as a stylish two-syllable boy name with its trendy -er ending.…

Boston

Place-name

Unseen in the USA since 1901, Boston rocketed back into the Top 1000 in 2004 and, like other place-names such as Brooklyn, London and Paris, is now a reliable presence on the list.

Salem

Biblical place-name or Arabic

"safe"

Salem is a Biblical place name in Canaan, believed to be the same as Jerusalem, as well as the Massachusetts town famous for its late 17th century witch trials. Salem is also a popular first name in…

Jefferson

English

"son of Jeffrey"

The name of the third U.S. President sounds, like Harrison and Jackson, more modern and stylish now than its root name. Used as a first name long before our surname-crazed era, Jefferson was most…

Montgomery

Norman

"man power"

This image of this distinguished Anglo-Scottish surname, drawn from the French place name of the ancient castle of Saint Foi de Montgomery, is rapidly shifting from fusty and formal to cool. And…

Trenton

English, place-name

"Trent's town"

There's only one Trenton, New Jersey, but it's a widely used name, more for its fashionable -on ending than the reference to the city. Since 2007, however, Trenton has been on a steady decline.…