Caden
Masculine · “Either "son of Cadán”
Caden is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 72,045 boys against 948 girls since 1880. See Caden as a girl name
Caden belongs to a small cluster of names that arrived in American English through Irish surnames and the pull of rhyme — Aiden, Hayden, Braden, and Caden alongside them. It is two syllables, stress on the first, and almost nobody needs it repeated. Read aloud, it lands the way its cousins do, which is part of why it moved through the charts so quickly once it started.
How old is the name Caden?
Caden first appears in US birth records in 1979 — 46 years ago. The typical Caden alive today was born around 2009, making them about 16 years old. About 71,500 people named Caden are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Caden most popular?
Caden peaked in 2006, reaching #91 nationally. Today it ranks #201, 110 places below that high. See the whole 2006 chart.
Caden appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Caden
The surname line is real: Mac Cadáin appears in Irish records, and Caden and Cadan both survive as family names in Ireland and Britain. What is not documented is a long run of Caden as a first name in English before the twentieth century — it simply is not there in the older registers. It surfaced in American use in the late twentieth century, in the same stretch that lifted Aiden, Hayden, Jayden and Braden into wide circulation, and it rose with them. So the honest account has two strands: an old surname with an Irish pedigree, and a first name that reached the general public through a modern American fashion for that particular ending.
Meaningscholars disagree
Either "son of Cadán," from an Irish surname, or no lexical meaning at all
One reading takes Caden as an anglicized form of the Irish surname Mac Cadáin, "son of Cadán," from a personal name built on the old element meaning battle. The other, equally serious, treats the given name as a modern American formation shaped by the -aden pattern already established by Aiden, Hayden and Braden — a name assembled from sound rather than inherited from a word. Both explanations have support, and the second does not make it a lesser name.
Pronouncing Caden
KAY-den
Two syllables, stress on the first, second syllable unstressed and light. The pronunciation is settled; only the spelling varies.
Nicknames for Caden
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
- 1979
- Most boys named
- 20075,055 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #91reached in 2006
- Change vs 2024
- +3.3%1,742 in 2025, from 1,686
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.
Caden in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kaden in English — spelling variant
- Cayden in English — spelling variant
- Kaiden in English — spelling variant
- Cadán in Irish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Cadens among us
people named Caden are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 981 born in 2025 was named Caden
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Caden
- #201
- Caden on the 2025 chart
- #132
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Caden went to 1,742 boys in 2025, but Kaden is the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 2,784, which makes it the 132nd most-given boys’ name of the year — 69 places above the chart.
- Caden1,742
- Kaden1,034
and 1 rarer spelling.
About 1 boy in 614 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 981 for Caden 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 Wilbur test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Caden's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Wilbur climbed just as high around 1913, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Wilbur's path sketches the road Caden is walking now.
Caden 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 Caden is headed
Caden should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
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.
Caden beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Caden in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Phonetically transparent in American English — people hear it correctly the first time, because the -aden ending is already familiar to every ear.
- Comes with Cade, a short form that also works as a full name on its own, which gives a boy a shorter option without a nickname that sounds like one.
- Two syllables, no silent letters, no consonant clusters — easy for a young child to say and write early.
- Recognizable across English-speaking countries, and its variant spellings travel with it.
- The spelling is the real cost. Kaden, Cayden, Kaiden and Caiden are all in circulation, so a Caden will be spelling his name out for teachers, dentists and coffee shops for life.
- It sits inside a large rhyming cohort — Aiden, Hayden, Jayden, Braden — so classrooms may hold several names that sound like his without sharing it, and the whole set reads as belonging to a particular recent stretch of decades.
- Most people carrying the name are still young, which means it currently sounds like a name for teenagers and children rather than for adults. That changes on its own as they grow.
- If a documented ancient meaning matters to you, this is not the name that provides one; the origin has two live explanations and no tidy resolution.
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What they receive
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Caden
Masculine · #201 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Cadens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 71,500 people named Caden are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Caden?
- Caden is the most-used spelling in US records — 1,742 of the 2,784 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Kaden.
- How popular is the name Caden in 2025?
- Caden ranks #201 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,742 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Caden?
- About 1 in every 981 US boys born in 2025 was named Caden — 1,742 in all.
- Will my child share the name Caden with classmates?
- Caden will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Caden
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Andres#200 · Tatum#202 · Rory#199 · Timothy#203 · Kingston#204 · Jaziel#198 · Ashton#197 · Camden#205
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Caden? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Caden and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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