Hoover
Masculine · “A farmer with a holding”
Hoover is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 1,120 boys against 7 girls since 1880.
The vacuum cleaner was invented by a janitor with asthma who sold the patent to a relative. James Murray Spangler was sweeping a department store in Ohio, could not breathe for the dust, and built a machine from a soap box, a broom handle, a fan motor and a pillowcase; the leather-goods maker who bought it from him was married to his cousin and put his own name on it.
How old is the name Hoover?
Hoover first appears in US birth records in 1913 — 112 years ago. The typical Hoover alive today was born around 1929, making them about 96 years old. About 200 people named Hoover are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Hoover most popular?
Hoover peaked in 1928, reaching #362 nationally. See the whole 1928 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Huber to Hoover
The story of Hoover
The name arrived on American birth certificates as a vote. The record shows it given to children in the year the man who carried it was elected president, which was also the year he was best known for something other than politics: he had run the relief operation that fed occupied Belgium through the First World War and then the American food administration, and was, at that point, one of the most admired administrators in the world. Naming a child after a public figure at the moment of their elevation is one of the oldest patterns in the American record, and it is nearly always visible as a single sharp spike rather than a fashion.
Meaning
A farmer with a holding
An anglicized German surname, from Huber, a man who held a Hube: a measured unit of farmland, roughly what one household could work. It described a substantial peasant rather than a laborer, and it is one of the commonest surnames in southern Germany for exactly that reason.
How the name formed
- Huber
- Hoover
Related forms: Huber
Pronouncing Hoover
HOO-ver
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The German original has a long u and a b, so the English name is a good deal further from it than the spelling suggests.
Nicknames for Hoover
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 boys named
- 1928256 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #362reached in 1928
- Change vs 1988
- −25.0%6 in 2022, 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.
Hoover in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Huber in German — related form
Hoovers among us
people named Hoover 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
Hoover 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
- It works for a child of either sex, which the record confirms.
- Short, firm and impossible to mispronounce.
- The surname behind it has a concrete and traceable meaning.
- The record carries it for girls as well as boys, so it signals nothing on a form.
- In Britain the word is a verb and a brand before it is anything else.
- The presidency it points to ended in a depression, and the shantytowns of those years were named after him.
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What they receive
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Hoover
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Hoovers 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 Hoover are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Hoover in 2025?
- Hoover is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Hoover with classmates?
- Hoover will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More H names
The most-given names starting with H, all years combined.
Henry#5 · Harold#991 · Harry#775 · Howard#1002 · Hunter#130 · Herbert#2641 · Herman#2363 · Harvey#251
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Hoover? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Hoover and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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