Cooper
Masculine · “barrel maker”
Cooper is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 123,702 boys against 2,782 girls since 1880. See Cooper as a girl 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 1882 — 143 years ago. The typical Cooper is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 122,000 people named Cooper are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cooper most popular?
Cooper peaked in 2025, reaching #27 nationally. Today it ranks #27, 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'.
Cultural footprint
Cooper Flagg (b. 2006) — Basketball phenom taken No. 1 in the NBA draft
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
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
- 1882
- Most boys named
- 20257,472 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #27reached in 2025
- Change vs 2022
- +32.7%7,472 in 2025, from 5,631
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, Ohio. International figures from Statistics Canada, National Records of Scotland. Sources
Coopers among us
people named Cooper are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 229 born in 2025 was named Cooper
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 Shawn 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: Shawn climbed just as high around 1973, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Shawn'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 boys 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.
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What they receive
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Cooper
Masculine · #27 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 122,000 people named Cooper are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Cooper in 2025?
- Cooper ranks #27 among US boy names in 2025, with 7,472 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Cooper?
- About 1 in every 229 US boys born in 2025 was named Cooper — 7,472 in all.
- Will my child share the name Cooper with classmates?
- Roughly 1 in 9 classrooms will have a child named Cooper.
Ranked beside Cooper
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Santiago#26 · Asher#28 · Joseph#29 · Julian#25 · Alexander#30 · Ethan#24 · John#23 · Owen#31
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; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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