Eureka
Feminine · “I have found it”
Eureka is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 860 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Eureka is a complete sentence in Greek: heureka, I have found it, the perfect tense of the verb to find. Vitruvius tells the story of Archimedes shouting it from the bath, and Vitruvius was writing a couple of centuries after Archimedes died, so the anecdote is Roman rather than eyewitness. The word outlived the story anyway, and American maps carry it in half a dozen places.
How old is the name Eureka?
Eureka first appears in US birth records in 1913 — 112 years ago. The typical Eureka alive today was born around 1977, making them about 48 years old. About 800 people named Eureka are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Eureka most popular?
Eureka peaked in 1974, reaching #1961 nationally. Today it ranks #14942, 12,981 places below that high. See the whole 1974 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From heureka to Eureka
The story of Eureka
The word's American life begins with gold. California adopted Eureka as its motto on the state seal in 1849, at the exact moment the territory filled with people looking for something, and the word has been fixed to the state ever since — a city on the northern coast carries it, and so do towns in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada and Illinois. It also crossed to Australia, where the Eureka Stockade gave the word a political weight it does not carry here. As a given name it arrives through the map rather than through the classroom: an American family naming a daughter Eureka in the nineteenth century was far more likely to have seen the word on a seal, a storefront or a signpost than in a Greek text.
Meaning
I have found it
Greek heureka is a verb rather than a noun: first person, perfect tense, from heuriskein, to find. English keeps it as an exclamation and the name keeps it as a word, which makes this one of the very few given names that is grammatically a sentence. The same verb gives English heuristic. Nothing about the meaning is contested. The only uncertain part of the story is whether Archimedes ever said it.
How the name formed
- heureka
- Eureka
Related forms: εὕρηκα
Pronouncing Eureka
yoo-REE-kuh
yoo-REE-kuh, stress in the middle, exactly as the exclamation is said in English. Modern Greek puts the weight at the front and sounds the h: something like EV-ree-ka. English has never used that and is not about to start.
Nicknames for Eureka
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
- 1913
- Most girls named
- 197443 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1961reached in 1974
- Change vs 2022
- −28.6%5 in 2025, from 7
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.
Eureka in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- εὕρηκα in Greek — transliteration
Eurekas among us
people named Eureka are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 321,453 born in 2025 was named Eureka
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Loveda test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Eureka's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Loveda climbed just as high around 1928, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Loveda's path sketches the road Eureka is walking now.
Eureka sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Eureka beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Eureka in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Everyone already knows the word, so it is never mispronounced and rarely misspelled.
- It is a genuine piece of ancient Greek rather than a coinage, with an unbroken record from antiquity to the road atlas.
- Ree and Reka both work as short forms that sound like names rather than like the exclamation.
- It is an exclamation. Read flat off a roll call it will always carry a small charge of comedy, and that does not wear off with familiarity.
- The California associations are strong — the gold rush, the state seal, the towns — and outside the West they may be the only thing the name calls up.
- This spelling goes to boys as well as girls, though far more often to girls, so a boy carrying it will be read as a girl on every list he appears on.
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What they receive
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Eureka
Feminine · #14942 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Eurekas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Eureka are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Eureka in 2025?
- Eureka ranks #14942 among US girl names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Eureka?
- About 1 in every 321,453 US girls born in 2025 was named Eureka — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Eureka with classmates?
- Eureka will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Eureka
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Hester#14942 · Lyda#14942 · Zula#14942 · Zona#14942 · Ula#14942 · Belva#14942 · Lucetta#14942 · Leala#14942
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Eureka? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Eureka and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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