Ether
Feminine · “The upper air”
Ether is given to both — 1,214 girls and 71 boys since 1880. See other names given to both
There is a room in a Boston hospital called the Ether Dome, and it is called that because of what happened in it one October morning: a dentist gave a patient a colorless liquid to breathe, a surgeon removed a tumour from his neck, and the man did not scream. Surgery before that day was done on people who were awake.
How old is the name Ether?
Ether first appears in US birth records in 1883 — 142 years ago. The typical Ether alive today was born around 1923, making them about 102 years old. About 200 people named Ether are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Ether most popular?
Ether peaked in 1900, reaching #803 nationally. See the whole 1900 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From aither to Ether
The story of Ether
Physics wanted the word for something else and could not find it. Light was known to be a wave, waves were known to need something to wave in, and so there had to be a substance filling all of space through which light traveled: the luminiferous ether. Two Americans set out to measure the earth's motion through it with an interferometer sensitive enough to detect a fraction of a wavelength, expected a difference between beams sent along and across the motion, and got nothing. They repeated it and got nothing again. The null result is one of the most productive failures in the history of science, and it is part of what Einstein's account of light was built to explain. The substance the word named turned out not to exist.
Meaning
The upper air
Greek aither, the bright upper air that the gods were held to breathe, as against the ordinary air below. Chemists borrowed it for a volatile liquid and physicists for an invisible medium; American families borrowed it as a name, most likely because it was in every newspaper. It is also possible that some entries are respellings of Esther, and the record does not distinguish.
How the name formed
- aither
- aether
- ether
Pronouncing Ether
EE-thur
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The th is the unvoiced one, as in thin, not the voiced one in either; that is what separates the word from the name Esther in American speech, where the two are otherwise close.
Nicknames for Ether
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
- 1883
- Most girls named
- 192148 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #803reached in 1900
- Change vs 1958
- +20.0%6 in 1964, from 5
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.
Ethers among us
people named Ether 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
Ether 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
- Short, clear and impossible to misspell once heard.
- It carries two genuinely large stories, one medical and one in physics.
- It works for a child of either sex, which the record confirms.
- It is the name of a chemical and an anaesthetic before it is a name to most people.
- The record carries it for boys as well as girls, so it signals nothing on a form.
- It will be heard as Esther and Edith, and both are far commoner.
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What they receive
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Ether
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Ethers are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 200 people named Ether are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Ether in 2025?
- Ether is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Ether with classmates?
- Ether 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 Ether? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Ether and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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