Ebonie
Feminine · “a dark hardwood”
Three spellings of this word name arrived in one decade and split the field between them. Ebony writes the word; Eboni ends on a bare i; Ebonie uses the older ie. All three are said the same way and all three appeared within a few years of each other.
How old is the name Ebonie?
Ebonie first appears in US birth records in 1971 — 54 years ago. The typical Ebonie alive today was born around 1987, making them about 38 years old. About 2,600 people named Ebonie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Ebonie most popular?
Ebonie peaked in 1982, reaching #1010 nationally. See the whole 1982 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From ebony to Ebonie
The story of Ebonie
When a word becomes a name, English has to decide what to do with the ending, and the three available answers are all in use here. Leaving it alone keeps the word visible; the bare i marks it as a name of a particular decade; the ie is the older and softer choice, the one that had been standard for familiar forms a century earlier. Families choosing between them were choosing how much they wanted the word to show. The record has all three charting together from the nineteen-seventies, which is a clean natural experiment in what an ending signals.
Meaning
a dark hardwood
The English word for the timber, which reached the language from Greek and before that from Egyptian. The name is that word with an ending applied.
How the name formed
- ebony
- Ebonie
Pronouncing Ebonie
EB-uh-nee
Three syllables with the weight at the front. All three spellings are said identically.
Nicknames for Ebonie
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
- 1971
- Most girls named
- 1982146 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1010reached in 1982
- Change vs 2011
- −12.5%7 in 2013, from 8
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.
Ebonies among us
people named Ebonie 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
Ebonie 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 word behind it is familiar to every English speaker.
- The ie ending softens it without changing the sound.
- It is read correctly at sight by everyone.
- Ebony is the standard spelling and will be written instead.
- As a word name it carries a meaning but no history to pass on.
- It dates precisely to the nineteen-seventies and eighties.
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Ebonie
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Ebonies are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,600 people named Ebonie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Ebonie in 2025?
- Ebonie is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Ebonie with classmates?
- Ebonie 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 Ebonie? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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