Aurora
Feminine · Latin roots · “Dawn”
Aurora is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 99,113 girls against 96 boys since 1880.
Aurora is the Latin word for dawn, and the name of the Roman goddess who opened the sky each morning ahead of the sun. The same word was borrowed by seventeenth-century astronomers for the northern lights — aurora borealis — and later given to the sleeping princess of Tchaikovsky's ballet. It is a name that has been attached to first light for well over two thousand years, and it still says so in plain Latin.
How old is the name Aurora?
Aurora was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Aurora is a kid of about 6 — this name's wave is very recent. About 90,500 people named Aurora are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Aurora most popular?
Aurora peaked in 2025, reaching #15 nationally. Today it ranks #15, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Aurora appears on these lists:
- Transatlantic hits: loved on both sides of the ocean
- America's top 100 names right now
- Vowel names: soft starts from A to O
- Gorgeous — and about to be everywhere
- Names at their all-time peak, right now
- Generation Alpha names (born 2013 onward)
- all guides
Works in Italian and Scandinavian families too:
Where it comes from
From aurora (Latin, 'dawn') to Aurora
The story of Aurora
The name comes straight from Latin, where aurora was the ordinary word for daybreak and also the name of a goddess in Roman religion and poetry. Because Latin remained the language of learning long after Rome, the word traveled forward intact: astronomers in the seventeenth century used aurora borealis for the polar lights, and the noun stayed recognizable in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, where Aurora became a standard given name. English took it up as a personal name largely through that literary and scientific afterlife — Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel Aurora Leigh appeared in 1856, and the ballet The Sleeping Beauty, first staged in 1890, gave its princess the name, as did the Disney film of 1959.
Meaning
Dawn
Aurora is simply the Latin noun for dawn, and the name of the Roman dawn goddess, counterpart to the Greek Eos.
How the name formed
- auroraLatin, 'dawn'
- AuroraRoman goddess
- Auroragiven name in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
- Aurora / AuroreEnglish, French
Related forms: Aurora · Aurora · Aurore · Aurora · Auróra · Avrora (Аврора)
Pronouncing Aurora
uh-ROR-uh
Also commonly aw-ROR-uh, with the first vowel like the 'aw' in law; both are standard in American English. Spanish and Italian speakers say ow-ROH-rah, with a tapped r.
Nicknames for Aurora
High
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
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 20257,065 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #15reached in 2025
- Change vs 2022
- +17.7%7,065 in 2025, from 6,003
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.
Aurora in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Aurora in Italian — same name
- Aurora in Spanish — same name
- Aurore in French — related form
- Aurora in Portuguese — same name
- Auróra in Hungarian — spelling variant
- Avrora (Аврора) in Russian — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida. International figures from Statistics Canada, Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland. Sources
Auroras among us
people named Aurora are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 227 born in 2025 was named Aurora
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 Chelsea test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Aurora's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Chelsea climbed just as high around 1992, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Chelsea's path sketches the road Aurora is walking now.
Aurora is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Aurora is headed
Aurora 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.
Aurora beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Aurora in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the same in English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, so it crosses those languages without adjustment or explanation.
- The meaning is transparent and easy to tell: dawn, from Latin, with no competing theories to sort out.
- Several established short forms already in use — Rory, Rora, Aura — including one that works as a full name on its own.
- Documented as a word and a name for over two thousand years, and in use in English-speaking countries for generations.
- The Disney princess is the strongest association for many Americans, and will likely come up at some point. It fades with age, but it is there early.
- Two r's and three syllables make it a mouthful for a toddler learning to say their own name, and the first vowel gets pronounced two different ways.
- The name is climbing quickly, so a child born now may meet more Auroras in later grades than the current picture suggests — though nothing like a classroom full.
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What they receive
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Aurora
Feminine · Latin roots · #15 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Auroras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 90,500 people named Aurora are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Aurora in 2025?
- Aurora ranks #15 among US girl names in 2025, with 7,065 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Aurora?
- About 1 in every 227 US girls born in 2025 was named Aurora — 7,065 in all.
- Will my child share the name Aurora with classmates?
- Roughly 1 in 9 classrooms will have a child named Aurora.
Ranked beside Aurora
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ailany#14 · Harper#16 · Elizabeth#17 · Violet#13 · Lily#18 · Eleanor#12 · Camila#19 · Ava#11
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Aurora? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Aurora and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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