Caspian
Masculine · “of the Caspian Sea”
Caspian is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 4,170 boys against 5 girls since 1880.
Caspian is the name of a sea before it was the name of a boy — a vast inland water the Greeks called the Kaspion, after the Caspii people who lived along its shores. C.S. Lewis lifted it into English as a given name for the young prince of Narnia in the 1950s, and readers have been carrying it out of the books ever since. Three syllables, all of them easy: KASS-pee-un.
How old is the name Caspian?
Caspian first appears in US birth records in 1998 — 27 years ago. The typical Caspian is a kid of about 4 — this name's wave is very recent. About 4,100 people named Caspian are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Caspian most popular?
Caspian peaked in 2025, reaching #491 nationally. Today it ranks #491, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Caspian appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Caspii to Caspian
The story of Caspian
The Caspii were a people known to Greek and Roman geographers, and the great landlocked sea beside them took their name: Kaspion to the Greeks, Mare Caspium in Latin. For centuries afterward Caspian was purely geography — a place on a map, not a person. C.S. Lewis changed that when he gave the name to the boy king of Narnia in the books he published in the 1950s, and it has been read aloud to children in that form ever since. Its life as a given name in the United States is genuinely recent, and it is still climbing.
Meaning
of the Caspian Sea; from the ancient Caspii people
The route is clear — the sea took its name from the Caspii, a people of the Transcaucasus region, and the name came to English through the sea. What the tribal name itself meant in its own language was never recorded, so the trail stops there.
How the name formed
- Caspii
- Kaspion
- Mare Caspium
- Caspian
Related forms: Kaspian · Kaspian
Pronouncing Caspian
KASS-pee-un
Stress on the first syllable, exactly as in the name of the sea. Some families say KASS-pyun, running the last two syllables together. Rarely misread, though it is sometimes heard as Casper on a first introduction.
Nicknames for Caspian
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
- 1998
- Most boys named
- 2025614 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #491reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +24.3%614 in 2025, from 494
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.
Caspian in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kaspian in English — spelling variant
- Kaspian in Swedish — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Caspians among us
people named Caspian are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 2,782 born in 2025 was named Caspian
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 Rodrick test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Caspian's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Rodrick climbed just as high around 1977, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Rodrick's path sketches the road Caspian is walking now.
Caspian 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 Caspian is headed
Caspian 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.
Caspian beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Caspian in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The spelling is already familiar to anyone who has seen a world map or read Narnia, so it is usually written correctly the first time.
- It sits beside well-established Cas- names — Casper, Cassius, Cassian — which makes it easy for strangers to hear and repeat.
- Short forms come ready-made: Cas, Cass, Casp, all in real use and none invented for the purpose.
- Long documented history as a word, even though its life as a given name is new — it was not coined recently.
- It will be mistaken for Casper often enough to notice. The two names are unrelated in origin, but they share four letters and a rhythm, and people fill in what they expect to hear.
- The Narnia link is real and permanent. Many people will place the name in those books immediately, which is charming to some readers and a little bookish for others.
- It is climbing steadily, so a child born now may meet more Caspians as a teenager than as a toddler — still uncommon, but less singular than it is today.
- As a place name, it invites the question "like the sea?" for a lifetime. That is a small toll, and an easy one to answer.
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What they receive
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Caspian
Masculine · #491 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Caspians are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,100 people named Caspian are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Caspian in 2025?
- Caspian ranks #491 among US boy names in 2025, with 614 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Caspian?
- About 1 in every 2,782 US boys born in 2025 was named Caspian — 614 in all.
- Will my child share the name Caspian with classmates?
- Caspian will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Caspian
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Rodrigo#491 · Arjun#490 · Sean#489 · Collin#493 · Leland#494 · Donovan#495 · Armani#495 · Edgar#486
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Caspian? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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