Cove
Masculine · “a small sheltered bay or inlet”
Cove is given to both — 1,224 boys and 472 girls since 1880. See Cove as a girl nameSee other names given to both
Cove began as an ordinary English word for a small sheltered bay — the kind of curve in a coastline where boats wait out weather. Behind that lies the Old English cofa, a chamber or hollow, which gives the name a paper trail running back more than a thousand years even though its use for babies is very new. One syllable, one clean vowel, and no one has to ask how it is spelled.
How old is the name Cove?
Cove first appears in US birth records in 1997 — 28 years ago. The typical Cove is a kid of about 3 — this name's wave is very recent. About 1,200 people named Cove are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cove most popular?
Cove peaked in 2025, reaching #1191 nationally. Today it ranks #1191, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Cove appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From cofa (Old English: chamber, hollow) to Cove
The story of Cove
Cove is an English vocabulary word pressed into service as a first name. Its root, cofa, appears in Old English with the sense of a chamber or hollow place, and shares ancestry with Old Norse kofi, a hut or shed; by the later medieval and early modern period the word had settled into its coastal meaning of a small sheltered bay. It also survives as an English surname and in the names of villages and inlets called Cove on both sides of the Atlantic. Its life as a given name is recent and American, arriving with the broader turn toward short landscape words — Reed, Bay, Wren, Lake — and it is still climbing rather than settling.
Meaning
a small sheltered bay or inlet
The modern coastal sense grew out of Old English cofa, 'chamber, hollow, recess' — the word narrowed over centuries from an inner room to a hollow in the shore.
How the name formed
- cofaOld English: chamber, hollow
- coveEnglish: sheltered bay
- Covesurname and place name
- Covegiven name
Pronouncing Cove
KOHV
One syllable, rhyming with stove. English speakers read it correctly on sight because it is already a word they know.
Nicknames for Cove
Limited
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
- 1997
- Most boys named
- 2025171 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1191reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +1.8%171 in 2025, from 168
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
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Utah.
Coves among us
people named Cove are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 9,989 born in 2025 was named Cove
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Cove
- #1191
- Cove on the 2025 chart
- #709
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Cove went to 171 boys in 2025, but Kove is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 221, which makes it the 709th most-given boys’ name of the year — 482 places above the chart.
- Cove171
- Kove50
About 1 boy in 7,729 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 9,989 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 Izaac 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: Izaac climbed just as high around 2005, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Izaac'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 looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 40% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds. 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 boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled exactly like the common English word, so it needs no clarification once heard.
- One syllable and one vowel sound — easy to say, easy for a young child to write, and it pairs cleanly with longer surnames.
- Sits comfortably in the familiar sound family of Cole, Cade and Coen without duplicating any of them.
- Carries a documented word history reaching back to Old English, unusual for a name this new to the charts.
- It is a word before it is a name, so it will occasionally be heard as vocabulary rather than as a person — expect a beat of clarification when introducing him by phone or in writing.
- There is essentially no nickname tradition here. A one-syllable name stays whole, which suits some families and leaves others without a softer option for the toddler years.
- Nothing about the word itself is masculine, so while US records show it used for boys, some people will hear it as usable either way.
- Rare enough that he is likely to be the only one anywhere near him, and rising quickly enough that the picture could look different by the time he starts school.
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
Masculine · #1191 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 1,200 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 — 171 of the 221 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Kove.
- How popular is the name Cove in 2025?
- Cove ranks #1191 among US boy names in 2025, with 171 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Cove?
- About 1 in every 9,989 US boys born in 2025 was named Cove — 171 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.
Amirion#1191 · Jair#1193 · Will#1193 · Syncere#1193 · Jabari#1188 · Bishop#1188 · Kristopher#1188 · Ever#1196
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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