Cove
Feminine · “small bay”
Cove is given to both — 472 girls and 1,224 boys since 1880. See Cove as a boy nameSee other names given to both
Cove is a sheltered bay, and the Old English cofa meant a small chamber or a den before the sense moved outdoors to the shoreline.
How old is the name Cove?
Cove first appears in US birth records in 2014 — 11 years ago. Cove is overwhelmingly a brand-new baby name right now — most Coves are still in diapers. About 500 people named Cove are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cove most popular?
Cove peaked in 2025, reaching #1927 nationally. Today it ranks #1927, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From cofa to Cove
The story of Cove
Cofa named an inner room before it named an inlet — the sense moved outward from shelter indoors to shelter on a coast. Landscape word-names rose in American naming from the 2010s alongside Bay, Marsh, Wren and Fern. Cove appears in the American registers for both sexes in current use.
Meaning
small bay, sheltered inlet
From the Old English cofa, 'chamber', 'closet' or 'den', shared with the German Koben and the Norse kofi, 'hut'. The maritime sense of a small sheltered bay is a later English development. The word is ordinary and the shift is documented.
How the name formed
- cofa
- cove
- Cove
Related forms: Koben · Kofi
Pronouncing Cove
KOHV
One syllable. It is a homophone of the ordinary English noun.
Nicknames for Cove
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
- 2014
- Most girls named
- 2025100 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1927reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +23.5%100 in 2025, from 81
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.
Cove in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Koben in German — related form
- Kofi in Norse — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Florida, California, Utah.
Coves among us
people named Cove are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 16,073 born in 2025 was named Cove
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Cove
- #1927
- Cove on the 2025 chart
- #828
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Cove went to 100 girls in 2025, but Kove is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 132, which makes it the 828th most-given girls’ name of the year — 1,099 places above the chart.
- Cove100
- Kove32
About 1 girl in 12,176 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 16,073 for Cove 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 Christianne test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Cove's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Christianne climbed just as high around 1969, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Christianne's path sketches the road Cove is walking now.
Cove 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 Cove is headed
Cove is on a steep climb — if the curve holds, 2030 could see around 87% more babies given the name than today. Its history is short or jumpy, though, so read this as a sketch rather than a promise.
Low 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.
Cove beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Cove in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The shift from an indoor chamber to a sheltered bay is a genuinely good word history.
- One syllable, clean, and never mispronounced.
- It belongs to a coherent and current family of landscape names.
- It is an ordinary English noun and reads as one.
- It is thoroughly unisex and very new as a given name.
- It is very short and can be swallowed by a long surname.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Cove to the vote.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Cove
Feminine · #1927 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Coves are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Cove are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Cove?
- Cove is the most-used spelling in US records — 100 of the 132 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Kove.
- How popular is the name Cove in 2025?
- Cove ranks #1927 among US girl names in 2025, with 100 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Cove?
- About 1 in every 16,073 US girls born in 2025 was named Cove — 100 in all.
- Will my child share the name Cove with classmates?
- Cove will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Cove
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Isela#1927 · Ahuva#1927 · Collyns#1927 · Estefany#1927 · Cori#1927 · Cindy#1927 · Lula#1927 · Coral#1927
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Cove? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Cove and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Cast your vote
Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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