Akela
Feminine · “alone”
Akela is given to both — 620 girls and 38 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
Every Cub Scout pack in the world has an Akela, and the word came out of a book. Kipling gave it to the lone wolf who leads the Seeonee pack, and when the Scouts built their junior program on The Jungle Book they took the name for the adult in charge. It is Hindi, and it means alone.
How old is the name Akela?
Akela first appears in US birth records in 1975 — 50 years ago. The typical Akela alive today was born around 1998, making them about 27 years old. About 600 people named Akela are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Akela most popular?
Akela peaked in 1996, reaching #3942 nationally. Today it ranks #11932, 7,990 places below that high. See the whole 1996 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From akela to Akela
The story of Akela
Kipling's animal names are almost all plain Hindustani nouns, which English readers took for exotic invented words because they could not read them. Baloo means bear. Bagheera is from the word for a leopard. Hathi is an elephant. Akela is alone. When Baden-Powell built the Wolf Cub program in 1916 he used the book as its frame, and the leader took the wolf's name; a century later, in countries that have never had a wolf or a Kipling, children still call an adult Akela without knowing that they are calling them lonely. The name is given to children in India and elsewhere quite separately from any of this.
Meaning
alone, single
From Hindi and Urdu akela, alone or solitary, an ordinary adjective. Kipling, who grew up speaking Hindustani, used real words for most of his animal names — Baloo is a bear, Bagheera a panther, Hathi an elephant, Shere Khan a tiger with a title. Akela is the lone one, which is what he is.
How the name formed
- akela
- Akela
Related forms: Akela · Akela
Pronouncing Akela
ah-KAY-lah
Three syllables, stress in the middle. uh-KEE-luh, with a long e, is the commoner Scouting pronunciation in English-speaking countries and is heard here too.
Nicknames for Akela
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
- 1975
- Most girls named
- 199627 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #3942reached in 1996
- Change vs 2023
- +16.7%7 in 2025, from 6
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.
Akela in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Akela in Hindi — same name
- Akela in Urdu — transliteration
Akelas among us
people named Akela are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 229,610 born in 2025 was named Akela
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Akela
- #11932
- Akela on the 2025 chart
- #938
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Akela went to 7 girls in 2025, but Akeelah is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 22, which makes it the 938th most-given girls’ name of the year — 10,994 places above the chart.
- Akeelah15
- Akela7
About 1 girl in 73,058 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 229,610 for Akela itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Graziella test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Akela's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Graziella climbed just as high around 1971, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Graziella's path sketches the road Akela is walking now.
Akela 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
Akela beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Akela in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A documented meaning in a living language, checkable in an ordinary dictionary.
- Three open syllables with a clear central stress.
- It serves either child, which the records confirm.
- Anyone who has been in Scouting will hear a job title rather than a name.
- The wolf it comes from is male, so the association cuts across the way the name is mostly given.
- Akeela, Akila and Aqila are all in use and are separate names with separate sources.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Akela
Feminine · #11932 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Akelas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 600 people named Akela are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Akela?
- Akela is one of 2 recorded spellings. Akeelah is the more common one — 15 births in 2025 against 7 for Akela.
- How popular is the name Akela in 2025?
- Akela ranks #11932 among US girl names in 2025, with 7 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Akela?
- About 1 in every 229,610 US girls born in 2025 was named Akela — 7 in all.
- Will my child share the name Akela with classmates?
- Akela will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Akela
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Vina#11932 · Retta#11932 · Missouri#11932 · Iola#11932 · Eddie#11932 · Thomas#11932 · Louetta#11932 · Elvina#11932
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Akela? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Akela and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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