Honesty
Feminine · “honor”
Honesty is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 5,045 girls against 6 boys since 1880.
Honesty is Latin for honor before it is about truth — honestas meant reputation and standing, and the sense of truth-telling arrived in English much later.
How old is the name Honesty?
Honesty first appears in US birth records in 1975 — 50 years ago. The typical Honesty is a kid of about 12 — this name's wave is very recent. About 5,000 people named Honesty are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Honesty most popular?
Honesty peaked in 2019, reaching #1010 nationally. Today it ranks #1611, 601 places below that high. See the whole 2019 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From honos to Honesty
The story of Honesty
Virtue names have a long English history through the Puritan tradition — Faith, Hope, Prudence, Temperance — and the later twentieth century revived the category with Destiny, Serenity, Trinity and Honesty. Honesty appears in the American registers from the 1990s and is in current use. There is also a plant of the name, Lunaria annua.
Meaning
honor, respectability; truthfulness
From the Latin honestas, 'honor', 'respectability' or 'good repute', from honos. In Middle English it meant decency and social standing; the modern sense of truthfulness became primary only in the sixteenth century. The shift is documented in the record of the word.
How the name formed
- honos
- honestas
- honesty
- Honesty
Related forms: Honestidad · Honnêteté
Pronouncing Honesty
ON-us-tee
Three syllables, stress on the first. The h is silent, as it is in the ordinary English word.
Nicknames for Honesty
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
- 1975
- Most girls named
- 2014256 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1010reached in 2019
- Change vs 2024
- −19.9%129 in 2025, from 161
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.
Honesty in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Honestidad in Spanish — related form
- Honnêteté in French — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Florida, Georgia.
Honestys among us
people named Honesty are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 12,459 born in 2025 was named Honesty
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Honesty
- #1611
- Honesty on the 2025 chart
- #759
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Honesty went to 129 girls in 2025, but Honesti and Honestii are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 201, which makes it the 759th most-given girls’ name of the year — 852 places above the chart.
- Honesty129
- Honesti57
- Honestii15
About 1 girl in 7,996 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 12,459 for Honesty 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 Ebonie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Honesty's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Ebonie climbed just as high around 1982, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Ebonie's path sketches the road Honesty is walking now.
Honesty 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
Where Honesty is headed
Honesty should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium 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.
Honesty beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Honesty in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The shift from honor to truthfulness is a genuinely good piece of word history.
- It belongs to a documented and coherent family of English virtue names.
- The silvery-seeded plant of the same name is a real and lovely thing.
- It is an ordinary English noun and never reads as purely a name.
- It carries an expectation the bearer has no control over.
- The silent h will cause spelling problems.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Honesty to the vote.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Honesty
Feminine · #1611 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Honestys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,000 people named Honesty are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Honesty?
- Honesty is the most-used spelling in US records — 129 of the 201 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Honesti and Honestii.
- How popular is the name Honesty in 2025?
- Honesty ranks #1611 among US girl names in 2025, with 129 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Honesty?
- About 1 in every 12,459 US girls born in 2025 was named Honesty — 129 in all.
- Will my child share the name Honesty with classmates?
- Honesty will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Honesty
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kalayah#1611 · Kadence#1611 · Aavya#1611 · Lainee#1611 · Mari#1611 · Rosalynn#1611 · Asma#1611 · Jiya#1611
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Honesty? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Honesty 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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