Aarav
Masculine · “Sanskrit ārava”
Aarav is a short, modern Sanskrit-rooted name that rose in India within the last generation and traveled outward with families to the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia. Two syllables, no silent letters, the doubled vowel doing the work of telling you to hold that first sound: AH-rav. Its record here is young but has held a level course rather than spiking and vanishing.
How old is the name Aarav?
Aarav first appears in US birth records in 2002 — 23 years ago. The typical Aarav is a kid of about 9 — this name's wave is very recent. About 8,100 people named Aarav are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Aarav most popular?
Aarav peaked in 2014, reaching #523 nationally. Today it ranks #710, 187 places below that high. See the whole 2014 chart.
Aarav appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Sanskrit ārava to Aarav
The story of Aarav
Aarav belongs to a wave of short, vowel-forward names that became fashionable across urban India in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries — names light on syllables, easy in both Devanagari and Latin script, and drawn from Sanskrit vocabulary rather than from the older, longer epic names. It climbed quickly in Maharashtra, Delhi and Gujarat, and by the 2010s was among the most-given boys' names in India. The Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar named his son Aarav in the early 2000s, and the name's visibility in India grew through that decade. It reached American records through Indian-American families, which is why its footprint here is strongest in California, Texas and New Jersey.
Meaningscholars disagree
Sanskrit ārava, "sound, cry, humming" — though the popular modern gloss is "peaceful"
Two readings compete, and they pull in opposite directions. Classical Sanskrit आरव (ārava) is a noun for sound: a cry, a roar, the humming of bees. Meanwhile the gloss circulated across Indian naming culture and English-language name lists is "peaceful, calm", sometimes "wise". The Sanskrit dictionary reading is the better-documented one; the "peaceful" reading is the one most families using the name today have in mind. Both are genuinely in use.
How the name formed
- Sanskrit ārava
- Hindi/Marathi आरव
- Arav
- Aarav
Related forms: आरव · आरव · આરવ · Arav · Aarva · आरव
Pronouncing Aarav
AH-rav
Stress on the first syllable. The "aa" marks a held vowel as in "father"; the second syllable is light, closer to "ruv" than to the "rav" in "ravish". Americans usually manage it on the first hearing, though some will flatten the opening vowel to a short a.
Nicknames for Aarav
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 2002
- Most boys named
- 2015541 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #523reached in 2014
- Change vs 2024
- −6.7%377 in 2025, from 404
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Aarav in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- आरव in Hindi — transliteration
- आरव in Marathi — transliteration
- આરવ in Gujarati — transliteration
- Arav in English — spelling variant
- Aarva in English — spelling variant
- आरव in Nepali — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New Jersey.
Aaravs among us
people named Aarav are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 4,531 born in 2025 was named Aarav
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Santos test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Aarav's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Santos climbed just as high around 1906, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Santos's path sketches the road Aarav is walking now.
Aarav sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Aarav is headed
Aarav should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Aarav beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Aarav in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two syllables, five letters, no silent letters — it is spelled the way it sounds once heard.
- The same Latin spelling works in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and India, with a direct Devanagari equivalent behind it.
- Has an established affectionate short form, Aaru, already in ordinary family use.
- Sits comfortably in English initials and on forms: no accents, no hyphen, no length problems.
- The meaning is genuinely unsettled. If you want the name to mean "peaceful", know that Sanskrit dictionaries give ārava as "sound" or "cry" — worth deciding which reading you are comfortable telling your child about.
- Aarav, Arav and Aarv all circulate, so expect to spell it aloud fairly often. The doubled first vowel is the part people drop.
- Its record in the United States is recent, so nearly everyone carrying it is still a child. There are no adult Aaravs in public life here yet to smooth the way — an opening rather than a problem.
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What they receive
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Aarav
Masculine · #710 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Aaravs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 8,100 people named Aarav are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Aarav in 2025?
- Aarav ranks #710 among US boy names in 2025, with 377 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Aarav?
- About 1 in every 4,531 US boys born in 2025 was named Aarav — 377 in all.
- Will my child share the name Aarav with classmates?
- Aarav will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Aarav
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Aron#710 · Kenai#710 · Layton#710 · Carmelo#710 · Julien#709 · Dennis#707 · Ozias#707 · Wes#715
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Aarav? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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