Clover
Feminine · Old English roots · “the clover plant”
Clover is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 5,640 girls against 98 boys since 1880.
Clover comes straight from the English meadow word, the pink-and-white flower that fills summer pastures and that people have been kneeling in for centuries hoping to find one with four leaves. It says exactly what it is on first hearing, and it rolls out in two easy beats, rhyming with over and clover-honey. Familiar as a word, uncommon as a name.
How old is the name Clover?
Clover first appears in US birth records in 1897 — 128 years ago. The typical Clover is a kid of about 7 — this name's wave is very recent. About 5,200 people named Clover are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Clover most popular?
Clover peaked in 2025, reaching #517 nationally. Today it ranks #517, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Where it comes from
From clāfre (Old English) to Clover
The story of Clover
Clover belongs to the oldest layer of English vocabulary: clāfre was already the word for the pasture flower a thousand years ago, long before anyone thought to hand it to a child. It became a given name through the English habit of taking plants indoors as names, the same road traveled by Ivy, Daisy, Violet and Rose in the nineteenth century, when flower names swept through Britain and America together. Clover stayed on the quiet edge of that fashion rather than at its center, appearing in American records in small numbers for well over a century before the current rise. The luck attached to it is older than its use as a name — the four-leaf charm was folk practice long before it was a nursery.
Meaning
the clover plant
From Old English clāfre, the name of the three-leafed pasture flower; the same word gives Dutch klaver. The four-leaf variety became a good-luck token in British, Irish and later American folk custom, and the phrase "in clover" — living well, like cattle in a rich field — dates from the eighteenth century.
How the name formed
- clāfreOld English
- clover
- Clover
Pronouncing Clover
KLOH-ver
Two syllables, stress on the first, exactly like the word for the plant. No competing pronunciations in English.
Nicknames for Clover
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
- 1897
- Most girls named
- 2025578 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #517reached in 2025
- Change vs 2023
- +32.3%578 in 2025, from 437
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.
Clover in other languages
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Clovers among us
people named Clover are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 2,781 born in 2025 was named Clover
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Clover
- #517
- Clover on the 2025 chart
- #374
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Clover went to 578 girls in 2025, but Klover and Khlover are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 794, which makes it the 374th most-given girls’ name of the year — 143 places above the chart.
- Clover578
- Klover197
- Khlover19
About 1 girl in 2,024 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 2,781 for Clover 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 Loren test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Clover's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Loren climbed just as high around 1990, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Loren's path sketches the road Clover is walking now.
Clover 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 Clover is headed
Clover looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 36% 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.
Clover beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Clover in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Everyone already knows how to spell it — it is a common English word, so it survives phone calls and roll calls without correction.
- Two syllables with a single clear stress; easy for a toddler to say and easy to call across a playground.
- Sits in a well-established family of English plant names — Ivy, Daisy, Violet — so it reads as a name immediately, not as an invention.
- Carries a documented good-luck association through the four-leaf charm, a tradition several centuries old.
- It is genuinely uncommon. A Clover will likely be the only one she meets, which some children enjoy and others tire of explaining.
- The name's rise is very recent, so nearly all Clovers are young. She may go years without meeting an adult who shares it.
- Word names attach easily to animals — Clover is a favorite for cows, ponies and cats, and is the name of the cart-mare in Orwell's Animal Farm. Worth knowing, though it rarely comes up in daily life.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Clover to the vote.
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What they receive
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Clover
Feminine · Old English roots · #517 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Clovers are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,200 people named Clover are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Clover?
- Clover is the most-used spelling in US records — 578 of the 794 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Klover and Khlover.
- How popular is the name Clover in 2025?
- Clover ranks #517 among US girl names in 2025, with 578 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Clover?
- About 1 in every 2,781 US girls born in 2025 was named Clover — 578 in all.
- Will my child share the name Clover with classmates?
- Clover will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Clover
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Jream#517 · Eve#519 · Jovie#520 · Analeia#514 · Faye#514 · Louise#514 · Kate#520 · Amber#520
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Clover? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Clover and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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