Ebone
Feminine · “Ebony wood”
Ebone swaps the final y of Ebony for an e, which in English would normally be silent. The name behind it is a wood, and the wood is now a protected species: the trade that made it famous has taken so much of it that guitar makers and piano builders have had to change what they use.
How old is the name Ebone?
Ebone first appears in US birth records in 1974 — 51 years ago. The typical Ebone alive today was born around 1989, making them about 36 years old. About 1,200 people named Ebone are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Ebone most popular?
Ebone peaked in 1993, reaching #1569 nationally. See the whole 1993 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From hbny to Ebone
The story of Ebone
The trade has nearly finished the trees. Ebony grows slowly, only a fraction of any given tree is the black wood anybody wants, and for centuries the practice was to fell a great many and keep almost nothing; Madagascar and west Africa were logged hard and illegally for decades. When international trade controls were finally applied, instrument makers who had used the wood for fingerboards and piano keys for two hundred years had to justify every board and start accepting the streaked and paler timber they had previously thrown away. One large guitar company bought a mill in Cameroon specifically to change how the wood was cut. A name for a color turns out to be attached to a supply problem.
Meaning
Ebony wood
The English word for the black heartwood of several tropical trees, used directly as a name in the way that Ruby and Pearl are. The word itself reached English through Greek and Latin from Egyptian. Nothing in the name describes a person, and the final e in this spelling changes only the look.
How the name formed
- hbny
- ebenos
- Ebony
- Ebone
Pronouncing Ebone
EB-uh-nee
Three syllables with the stress at the front, said exactly as the word. The final e is doing what a final y does here rather than what a final e usually does, which is why the spelling misleads a reader meeting it cold.
Nicknames for Ebone
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
- 1974
- Most girls named
- 199398 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1569reached in 1993
- Change vs 2002
- −16.7%5 in 2003, from 6
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.
Ebones among us
people named Ebone are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Ebone sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The meaning is immediate and needs no explaining to anybody.
- The spoken name is completely familiar and is never misheard.
- It is genuinely uncommon in this spelling while being ordinary in sound.
- The final e asks to be silent and is not, so the spelling is read wrong on sight.
- Ebony is enormously commoner and will be written by anyone taking dictation.
- It is closely dated to the last decades of the twentieth century.
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Ebone
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Ebones 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 Ebone are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Ebone in 2025?
- Ebone is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Ebone with classmates?
- Ebone will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More E names
The most-given names starting with E, all years combined.
Elizabeth#17 · Emily#34 · Emma#3 · Evelyn#8 · Ella#29 · Eleanor#12 · Erin#833 · Edna#2458
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Ebone? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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