Anakin
Masculine
Anakin is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 5,842 boys against 50 girls since 1880.
Anakin was spoken aloud before it was ever written on a birth certificate: Obi-Wan Kenobi says it in the first Star Wars film of 1977, naming Luke Skywalker's father long before audiences met him. Twenty-two years later The Phantom Menace gave that name a boy's face and a childhood, and it has been in steady use ever since. Three syllables, stress on the first, and every one of them easy to say.
How old is the name Anakin?
Anakin first appears in US birth records in 1995 — 30 years ago. The typical Anakin is a kid of about 6 — this name's wave is very recent. About 5,800 people named Anakin are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Anakin most popular?
Anakin peaked in 2023, reaching #544 nationally. Today it ranks #648, 104 places below that high. See the whole 2023 chart.
Anakin appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Anakin
The name belongs to George Lucas, who put it in the mouth of Obi-Wan Kenobi in 1977 and left it unexplained for two decades. When the prequel trilogy opened in 1999 with The Phantom Menace, Anakin became a nine-year-old boy on a desert planet, and the name moved from a line of dialogue to a character parents had watched grow up. US birth records show it arriving before those prequels reached theaters, carried by the original three films alone, and then holding on rather than spiking and vanishing the way film names often do. It has stayed in continuous use through several turns of naming fashion since.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Anakin was coined for fiction, not inherited from a language, so it has no translation to give. What is documented is its author and its date: George Lucas wrote it into Star Wars, first heard on screen in 1977, and the films themselves never offer a meaning for it.
Pronouncing Anakin
AN-uh-kin
First syllable like the word "an", stress on it, and the ending rhymes with "kin". The films fixed this pronunciation for English speakers, so it rarely needs explaining twice.
Nicknames for Anakin
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
- 1995
- Most boys named
- 2023541 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #544reached in 2023
- Change vs 2024
- −12.0%427 in 2025, from 485
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.
Anakin in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- アナキン in Japanese — transliteration
- Энакин in Russian — transliteration
- 아나킨 in Korean — transliteration
- Ανακίν in Greek — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Anakins among us
people named Anakin are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 4,000 born in 2025 was named Anakin
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 Nathanial test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Anakin's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Nathanial climbed just as high around 1998, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Nathanial's path sketches the road Anakin is walking now.
Anakin 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 Anakin is headed
Anakin looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 21% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
Medium 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.
Anakin beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Anakin in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Almost everyone can spell it on first hearing, which is unusual for a name this uncommon — the films did the teaching.
- One settled pronunciation across English, with no regional variants to correct.
- A ready-made short form, Ani, already used affectionately within the story the name comes from.
- Uncommon enough that a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate, while still being fully familiar to adults.
- The name is tied to one character and no one else, and that character's story is his fall — he becomes Darth Vader. Anyone who knows the films knows the whole arc, and some will say so out loud.
- Ani is pronounced AH-nee in the films, which sounds like Annie and can lead to a gender mix-up over the phone or on a roster.
- Because it comes from a single source, expect the same conversation about it fairly often, at school and later on job applications. Some families find that easy; it is worth picturing in advance.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Anakin
Masculine · #648 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Anakins are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,800 people named Anakin are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Anakin in 2025?
- Anakin ranks #648 among US boy names in 2025, with 427 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Anakin?
- About 1 in every 4,000 US boys born in 2025 was named Anakin — 427 in all.
- Will my child share the name Anakin with classmates?
- Anakin will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Anakin
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Uriah#648 · Keanu#648 · Sam#647 · Chris#646 · Azael#645 · Phillip#651 · Otis#652 · Lochlan#644
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Anakin? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Anakin and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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