Aristides
Masculine · “Greek aristos”
Athens voted each year on whether to exile someone, and the vote was cast by scratching a name on a shard of pottery. The story goes that an illiterate citizen handed his shard to a passing stranger and asked him to write Aristides on it. The stranger asked what Aristides had done to him. Nothing, said the man, I am just tired of hearing him called the Just. The stranger was Aristides, and he wrote his own name.
How old is the name Aristides?
Aristides first appears in US birth records in 1917 — 108 years ago. The typical Aristides alive today was born around 1991, making them about 34 years old. About 600 people named Aristides are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Aristides most popular?
Aristides peaked in 1968, reaching #2576 nationally. Today it ranks #8243, 5,667 places below that high. See the whole 1968 chart.
Where it comes from
From Aristeides to Aristides
The story of Aristides
Ostracism was a deliberate constitutional safety valve: once a year the Athenian assembly decided whether to hold a vote, and if it did, the man with the most votes was exiled for ten years without loss of property or citizenship. It was not a trial and there was no charge. Several thousand actual ostraka survive, many with names scratched on them, and archaeologists have found caches of shards pre-inscribed with the same name in the same few hands, which is evidence of organized campaigning. Aristides was ostracized in 482 BC and recalled three years later when Persia invaded. The story about the illiterate voter comes from Plutarch, writing five hundred years afterwards, so it is a good story rather than a fact. The suffix -ides in the name is the standard Greek patronymic, the same one in Euripides and Thucydides.
Meaning
Greek aristos, best
From Greek aristos, best or noblest, with the patronymic suffix -ides, giving son of the best or descendant of Aristos. The same aristos gives aristocracy, rule by the best. Aristides of Athens, who died around 468 BC, was a general at Marathon and Salamis and was known as the Just. The name is current in Greek, Spanish and Portuguese. It peaks in the American data in 1968.
How the name formed
- Aristeides
- Aristides
Related forms: Aristeidis · Aristides · Aristides
Pronouncing Aristides
ah-ris-TEE-dees
Four syllables, stress on the third in Greek and Spanish. English speakers say uh-RIS-tuh-deez, moving the stress forward and reducing the middle vowels, which is the ordinary English treatment of a long borrowed name.
Nicknames for Aristides
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
- 1917
- Most boys named
- 199115 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2576reached in 1968
- Change vs 2023
- −10.0%9 in 2025, from 10
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.
Aristides in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Aristeidis in Greek — same name
- Aristides in Spanish — same name
- Aristides in Portuguese — same name
Aristidess among us
people named Aristides are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 189,786 born in 2025 was named Aristides
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 Chilton test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Aristides's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Chilton climbed just as high around 1945, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Chilton's path sketches the road Aristides is walking now.
Aristides 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
Aristides beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Aristides in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is settled and the historical figure is well documented.
- Ari is a short form that works in English, Greek and Hebrew alike.
- It carries a genuinely memorable story.
- Four syllables is long for American use.
- The Greek and English stress patterns differ.
- It is rare enough to need spelling out every time.
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What they receive
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Aristides
Masculine · #8243 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Aristidess 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 Aristides are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Aristides in 2025?
- Aristides ranks #8243 among US boy names in 2025, with 9 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Aristides?
- About 1 in every 189,786 US boys born in 2025 was named Aristides — 9 in all.
- Will my child share the name Aristides with classmates?
- Aristides will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Aristides
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Danial#8243 · Ogden#8243 · Aaren#8243 · Trinity#8243 · Kourtney#8243 · Maury#8243 · Lindon#8243 · Elbert#8243
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Aristides? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Aristides and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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