Cooper
Feminine · “barrel maker”
Cooper is given to boys far more often — 123,702 boys against 2,782 girls since 1880. See Cooper as a boy name
Cooper began as a job: the craftsman who raised staves into barrels, fitted the hoops and made a cask hold water. It is one of the oldest occupational surnames in English, and it moved to the front of the name in the American habit of turning trade names into first names. Two syllables, one obvious spelling, and a short form — Coop — that arrives on its own without anyone teaching it.
How old is the name Cooper?
Cooper first appears in US birth records in 1985 — 40 years ago. The typical Cooper is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 2,800 people named Cooper are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cooper most popular?
Cooper peaked in 2025, reaching #1241 nationally. Today it ranks #1241, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Where it comes from
From Latin cupa (cask) to Cooper
The story of Cooper
Before glass and tin, almost everything traveled in a barrel — ale, salt fish, gunpowder, nails — and the cooper was the tradesman who built the containers a whole economy leaned on. The word entered English from the Low Countries and Germany, where the same trade produced the surnames Kuiper and Küper, and by the late medieval period Cooper was already one of the commonest occupational surnames in England. It crossed the Atlantic with English settlers as a family name, and later joined the group of English trade surnames that American parents began using as first names. It charts as a boy's given name in Canada and Scotland as well, part of the same surname-first fashion in the English-speaking world.
Meaning
barrel maker
From Middle English couper, a maker of casks and tubs, traceable to Latin cupa 'cask'.
How the name formed
- Latin cupacask
- Middle English couper
- CooperEnglish occupational surname
- Coopergiven name
Related forms: Cowper · Kuiper · Küper
Pronouncing Cooper
KOO-per
Stress on the first syllable. The spelling gives the sound away, so it survives phone calls and roll call intact.
Nicknames for Cooper
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
- 1985
- Most girls named
- 2025181 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1241reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +25.7%181 in 2025, from 144
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.
Cooper in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Cowper in English — spelling variant
- Kuiper in Dutch — related form
- Küper in German — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, North Carolina.
Coopers among us
people named Cooper are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 8,880 born in 2025 was named Cooper
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Cooper
- #1241
- Cooper on the 2025 chart
- #740
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Cooper went to 181 girls in 2025, but Kooper and Copper are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 221, which makes it the 740th most-given girls’ name of the year — 501 places above the chart.
- Cooper181
- Kooper28
- Copper12
About 1 girl in 7,273 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 8,880 for Cooper 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 Jayna test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Cooper's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Jayna climbed just as high around 2001, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Jayna's path sketches the road Cooper is walking now.
Cooper 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 Cooper is headed
Cooper 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.
Cooper beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Cooper in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- One spelling, one pronunciation: almost no American reader hesitates over it, and it needs no correcting in writing or aloud.
- A ready-made short form in Coop, plus the full name for anything formal — two registers without effort.
- Long documented life as an English surname, so it has an unbroken record behind it rather than a recent invention.
- Also charts for boys in Canada and Scotland, so it travels comfortably across the English-speaking world.
- Its wave is very recent, so nearly everyone carrying it is a child or a young person. That means it reads young now, and will age with this generation rather than sounding established.
- Common enough that a Cooper may share the name with another in a school, though not in every classroom.
- On the girls' side this spelling is genuinely rare, so a girl named Cooper will often be assumed a boy on paper — manageable, but worth expecting.
- There is the Mini Cooper, and 'coop' as in chicken coop. Neither is unkind, but both will come up at some point.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Cooper
Feminine · #1241 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Coopers are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,800 people named Cooper are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Cooper?
- Cooper is the most-used spelling in US records — 181 of the 221 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Kooper and Copper.
- How popular is the name Cooper in 2025?
- Cooper ranks #1241 among US girl names in 2025, with 181 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Cooper?
- About 1 in every 8,880 US girls born in 2025 was named Cooper — 181 in all.
- Will my child share the name Cooper with classmates?
- Cooper will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Cooper
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Amal#1241 · Everley#1241 · Amethyst#1241 · Eliette#1241 · Jana#1241 · Anderson#1241 · Silvia#1235 · Emmaline#1235
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Cooper? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Cooper and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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