Amias
Masculine · “Most often read as 'loved”
Amias is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 3,109 boys against 7 girls since 1880.
Amias and its older twin Amyas have been written in English since the Tudor century — Sir Amias Paulet, Elizabeth I's stern custodian of Mary, Queen of Scots, carried it, and Charles Kingsley gave it to the hero of his 1855 adventure novel Westward Ho!. The sound puts it in company with Elias, Tobias and Silas, that whole family of names that end on an open -as. Its current wave in the US is very recent, but the spelling itself is four hundred years old.
How old is the name Amias?
Amias first appears in US birth records in 2000 — 25 years ago. The typical Amias is a kid of about 4 — this name's wave is very recent. About 3,100 people named Amias are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Amias most popular?
Amias peaked in 2025, reaching #642 nationally. Today it ranks #642, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Amias appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Amyas to Amias
The story of Amias
The name surfaces in English records in the sixteenth century, in the spelling Amyas as often as Amias, borne by gentry families including the Paulets of Somerset. It stayed a thin but unbroken thread through the following centuries, more a family name handed down than a fashionable pick. Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho! (1855) gave it its widest Victorian audience through the seafaring hero Amyas Leigh, and the name kept a quiet foothold in Britain from there. Its arrival in American use is much more recent, and the Amias spelling — rather than the older Amyas — is the one that has taken hold here.
Meaningscholars disagree
Most often read as 'loved', from Latin amatus
Two serious explanations compete. One traces it to Latin amatus, 'loved', by way of Amadeus; the other reads it as a locative surname turned first name, from the French city of Amiens, which turns up as a byname in medieval English records. Neither has been settled, and the name was already in ordinary use in England long before anyone tried to explain it.
How the name formed
- Amyas
- Amias
Related forms: Amyas · Amadeus · Amado · Aimé · Amato
Pronouncing Amias
uh-MY-us
uh-MY-us is the usual American reading. AY-mee-us and AM-ee-us are both heard too, particularly from people who know the older Amyas spelling, so expect to state your preference once and then again.
Nicknames for Amias
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
- 2000
- Most boys named
- 2025435 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #642reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +11.5%435 in 2025, from 390
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.
Amias in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Amyas in English (older spelling) — spelling variant
- Amadeus in Latin — related form
- Amado in Spanish — related form
- Aimé in French — related form
- Amato in Italian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Amiass among us
people named Amias are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 3,927 born in 2025 was named Amias
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 Davian test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Amias's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Davian climbed just as high around 2007, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Davian's path sketches the road Amias is walking now.
Amias 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 Amias is headed
Amias looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 18% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds. Its history is short or jumpy, though, so read this as a sketch rather than a promise.
Low 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.
Amias beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Amias in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Four centuries of written use in English behind it, so it is a rare name with a real record rather than a recent coinage.
- Sits inside a sound family Americans already know — Elias, Tobias, Silas — which makes it easy to hear and repeat.
- Two legitimate spellings, Amias and Amyas, let a family choose the plainer or the older-looking one.
- Uncommon enough that a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate at any point in school.
- The stress is genuinely unsettled: uh-MY-us, AY-mee-us and AM-ee-us all circulate. Whichever you choose, you will be correcting teachers, doctors' offices and new acquaintances for years.
- Amias and Amyas coexist, so the spelling will need saying aloud most times it is written down.
- No short form has settled into general use. Ami and Mias work, but they are family inventions rather than something the wider world will reach for.
- Its American wave is very new, so bearers here skew young — an adult Amias is still an unusual thing to meet in the US, though the name itself is far older than the trend.
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What they receive
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Amias
Masculine · #642 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Amiass are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,100 people named Amias are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Amias in 2025?
- Amias ranks #642 among US boy names in 2025, with 435 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Amias?
- About 1 in every 3,927 US boys born in 2025 was named Amias — 435 in all.
- Will my child share the name Amias with classmates?
- Amias will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Amias
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Julio#641 · Samir#643 · Lochlan#644 · Kasai#639 · Memphis#639 · Azael#645 · Chris#646 · Leonard#637
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Amias? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Amias and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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