Kooper
Masculine · “barrel maker”
Kooper is given to both — 4,012 boys and 380 girls since 1880. See other names given to both
Kooper is the barrel-maker's name in a newer coat. Behind it sits Cooper, the English surname for the craftsman who cut, bent and hooped the staves of a cask — one of the busiest trades in Europe for centuries, back when everything from ale to salted fish traveled in wood. The K, oddly enough, points back the way the word actually came: English took it from a Low German and Dutch root already spelled with a k.
How old is the name Kooper?
Kooper first appears in US birth records in 1990 — 35 years ago. The typical Kooper is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 4,000 people named Kooper are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kooper most popular?
Kooper peaked in 2022, reaching #979 nationally. Today it ranks #1024, 45 places below that high. See the whole 2022 chart.
Kooper appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From kūper (Middle Dutch / Middle Low German) to Kooper
The story of Kooper
The trade word arrived in medieval English from Dutch and Low German traders, and by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it had hardened into a hereditary surname for families in the cask business — a very common one, since every port and brewery needed coopers. Like Carter, Mason and Tucker, it crossed from surname to first name in the United States, where the occupational surnames became a whole naming category. Kooper is a straightforward respelling of that first name with an initial K, part of a broad American habit of swapping hard C for K. Its own record on the charts is short and recent, but the name underneath it is many centuries old.
Meaning
barrel maker, cask maker
From the Middle Dutch and Middle Low German kūper, a maker or repairer of casks — the same trade word that gave English 'cooperage'. Kooper is a respelled form of the surname Cooper and carries the same sense.
How the name formed
- kūperMiddle Dutch / Middle Low German
- CooperEnglish surname
- CooperAmerican given name
- Kooper
Related forms: Cooper · Kuiper · Küper
Pronouncing Kooper
KOO-per
Identical to Cooper. First syllable rhymes with 'too'; the stress falls on it.
Nicknames for Kooper
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
- 1990
- Most boys named
- 2022230 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #979reached in 2022
- Change vs 2024
- +8.5%218 in 2025, from 201
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.
Kooper in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Cooper in English — spelling variant
- Kuiper in Dutch — related form
- Küper in German — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Ohio, Oklahoma.
Koopers among us
people named Kooper are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 7,835 born in 2025 was named Kooper
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Kooper
- #1024
- Kooper on the 2025 chart
- #27
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Kooper went to 218 boys in 2025, but Cooper and Copper are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 7,732, which makes it the 27th most-given boys’ name of the year — 997 places above the chart.
- Cooper7,472
- Kooper218
- Copper42
About 1 boy in 221 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 7,835 for Kooper 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 Desi test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kooper's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Desi climbed just as high around 1970, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Desi's path sketches the road Kooper is walking now.
Kooper 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 Kooper is headed
Kooper should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High 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.
Kooper beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kooper in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Sounds exactly like the familiar Cooper, so it is never mispronounced — only ever misspelled.
- Has a clear, concrete meaning a child can picture: the maker of barrels.
- Comes with one ready-made short form, Koop, borrowed straight from the long-standing Coop.
- Sits with Carter, Tucker and Mason in the well-worn American tradition of trade surnames used as first names.
- The C spelling is the one everyone knows, so this child will spell the name out for life — on forms, at coffee counters, in every email signature.
- A K-for-C respelling reads as a deliberate stylistic choice of a fairly recent era, and it will always date the name a little more than plain Cooper does.
- He is unlikely to meet another Kooper, but very likely to share a classroom with a Cooper or two — expect the two spellings to be mixed up in registers and on team sheets.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Kooper
Masculine · #1024 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Koopers are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,000 people named Kooper are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Kooper?
- Kooper is one of 3 recorded spellings. Cooper is the more common one — 7,472 births in 2025 against 218 for Kooper.
- How popular is the name Kooper in 2025?
- Kooper ranks #1024 among US boy names in 2025, with 218 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kooper?
- About 1 in every 7,835 US boys born in 2025 was named Kooper — 218 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kooper with classmates?
- Kooper will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kooper
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Yaakov#1024 · Semaj#1026 · Gatlin#1026 · Kamazi#1021 · Bastian#1021 · Stefan#1021 · Kaius#1028 · Devon#1028
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kooper? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kooper and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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