Aidan
Masculine · “little fire”
Aidan is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 118,431 boys against 2,727 girls since 1880. See Aidan as a girl name
Aodh was the name of a fire god in pre-Christian Ireland, and the word stayed in use long after the god was gone. Add the Irish diminutive and you have Aodhan, a small fire — the name of the monk sent from Iona to Lindisfarne in the seventh century.
How old is the name Aidan?
Aidan first appears in US birth records in 1936 — 89 years ago. The typical Aidan alive today was born around 2006, making them about 19 years old. About 117,000 people named Aidan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Aidan most popular?
Aidan peaked in 2003, reaching #39 nationally. Today it ranks #326, 287 places below that high. See the whole 2003 chart.
Aidan appears on these lists:
- One-decade wonders
- Classics hiding in plain sight
- Under the radar: quietly excellent picks
- Y2K names: the class of the 2000s
- Names that fell out of the top 100 this century
- Irish names beyond St. Patrick's Day
- all guides
Works in Irish families too:
Where it comes from
From Aodh to Aidan
The story of Aidan
Aodh is among the oldest recorded Irish names, and its diminutive belonged to the monk whom the king of Northumbria asked Iona to send him. He founded the monastery on Lindisfarne in the seventh century, and the English kept his name in the spelling Aidan. It stayed in Irish use and went quiet in English for centuries, returning with the wider revival of Irish names in Ireland, Britain and America. The Irish spelling came back first. The phonetic Aiden followed, then Ayden, Aden and Adan, until the sound belonged to a whole cohort of names that rhyme with it and arrived alongside it.
Meaning
little fire
From Irish aodh, fire, with the diminutive ending -an. Aodh was also a divine name in the pre-Christian Irish material, and it survives in the surnames Mac Aodha and O hAodha, anglicized as McHugh, Magee and Mackay.
How the name formed
- Aodh
- Aodhan
- Aedan
- Aidan
Related forms: Aodhan · Aodh · Aodhan · Aiden · Ayden
Pronouncing Aidan
AY-dun
Two syllables, stress on the first. The Irish Aodhan is closer to AY-dawn, with a fuller second syllable than English gives it. The dh in the Irish spelling is silent; it marks a consonant that stopped being pronounced centuries ago.
Nicknames for Aidan
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
- 1936
- Most boys named
- 200310,067 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #39reached in 2003
- Change vs 2024
- −5.0%1,043 in 2025, from 1,098
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.
Aidan in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Aodhan in Irish — same name
- Aodh in Irish — related form
- Aodhan in Scottish Gaelic — same name
- Aiden in English — spelling variant
- Ayden in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, New York, Texas.
Aidans among us
people named Aidan are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,638 born in 2025 was named Aidan
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 Craig test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Aidan's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Craig climbed just as high around 1969, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Craig's path sketches the road Aidan is walking now.
Aidan is coming down from a big peak (#39 in 2003). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Aidan is headed
Aidan 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.
Aidan beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Aidan in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A documented seventh-century bearer and a fixed feast day, so the history is checkable rather than atmospheric.
- This is the Irish spelling, which settles the argument about which version is the original.
- Two syllables, stress on the first, and nobody needs to be told how to say it.
- It works unchanged in Ireland, Britain, Australia and the United States.
- Aiden, Ayden and Aden all exist, so this spelling will be corrected and re-corrected for life.
- It arrived alongside a large cohort of rhyming names and will be heard as one of them.
- The very few girls given the spelling will be read as boys on every form.
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What they receive
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Aidan
Masculine · #326 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Aidans are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 117,000 people named Aidan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Aidan in 2025?
- Aidan ranks #326 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,043 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Aidan?
- About 1 in every 1,638 US boys born in 2025 was named Aidan — 1,043 in all.
- Will my child share the name Aidan with classmates?
- Aidan will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Aidan
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Dariel#326 · Niko#325 · Zane#324 · Kaden#328 · Phoenix#329 · Jorge#322 · Josue#330 · Francisco#322
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Aidan? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Aidan and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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