Keiko
Feminine · “blessed child”
Keiko is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 1,170 girls against 14 boys since 1880.
You can date a Japanese woman by whether her name ends in -ko. The suffix means child, it dominated women's naming for most of the twentieth century, and then it collapsed: by the 1990s it had all but disappeared from the top of the Japanese lists.
How old is the name Keiko?
Keiko first appears in US birth records in 1922 — 103 years ago. The typical Keiko alive today was born around 1993, making them about 32 years old. About 1,000 people named Keiko are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Keiko most popular?
Keiko peaked in 1941, reaching #2397 nationally. Today it ranks #6546, 4,149 places below that high. See the whole 1941 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Keiko
The -ko ending was a marker of women's names in Japan for a century: it was used by the imperial family and then spread down, and by the mid-twentieth century a very large proportion of Japanese women's names ended in it. Its decline after about 1980 was rapid and near-total, so the suffix now reads as belonging to a specific generation in a way few naming elements anywhere do. Keiko's best year in United States records is 1941, which places it among Japanese-American families in the years immediately before internment, and its American history cannot be separated from that.
Meaningscholars disagree
blessed child, or happy child, depending on the characters
Japanese names are written in kanji and the same sound can be spelled many ways. Keiko is most often written with a character meaning blessing or favor, or one meaning celebration or joy, followed by ko, child. Other combinations exist. The romanised spelling carries the sound and discards the characters, so no single meaning can be given without knowing which were used.
Pronouncing Keiko
KAY-koh
Two syllables of even weight; Japanese uses pitch rather than stress. The ei is a long a, not two separate vowels, and the final o is short.
Nicknames for Keiko
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
- 1922
- Most girls named
- 199531 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2397reached in 1941
- Change vs 2023
- −34.6%17 in 2025, from 26
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.
Keiko in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Keiko in Japanese — same name
- Kei in Japanese — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California.
Keikos among us
people named Keiko are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 94,545 born in 2025 was named Keiko
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 Amna test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Keiko's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Amna climbed just as high around 1910, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Amna's path sketches the road Keiko is walking now.
Keiko 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
Keiko beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Keiko in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Five letters, two syllables, and easy for speakers of almost any language.
- A pleasant set of possible meanings through the characters.
- Kei is available as a short form and is a complete name in Japan.
- The -ko ending reads as a specific generation to Japanese speakers.
- Without the characters the name has no single meaning to state.
- In American records the name is closely tied to the 1930s and 1940s.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Keiko to the vote.
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What they receive
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Keiko
Feminine · #6546 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Keikos are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,000 people named Keiko are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Keiko in 2025?
- Keiko ranks #6546 among US girl names in 2025, with 17 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Keiko?
- About 1 in every 94,545 US girls born in 2025 was named Keiko — 17 in all.
- Will my child share the name Keiko with classmates?
- Keiko will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Keiko
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Roseann#6546 · Solveig#6546 · Elona#6546 · Rosette#6546 · Bradie#6546 · Rida#6546 · Gwendalyn#6546 · Lorene#6546
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Keiko? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Keiko 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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