Makoa
Masculine · “fearless”
Makoa is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 1,480 boys against 7 girls since 1880.
Makoa is a Hawaiian word carried straight into use as a name: it means fearless, brave. It moves in the mouth the way Hawaiian does, every vowel sounded and the weight landing on the middle — ma-KO-a. On the mainland it still arrives fresh, while in Hawai'i and California it has been gathering steadily for a generation of small children.
How old is the name Makoa?
Makoa first appears in US birth records in 1992 — 33 years ago. The typical Makoa is a kid of about 5 — this name's wave is very recent. About 1,500 people named Makoa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Makoa most popular?
Makoa peaked in 2024, reaching #1114 nationally. Today it ranks #1118, 4 places below that high. See the whole 2024 chart.
Makoa appears on this list:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Makoa
Makoa comes from Hawaiian, where personal names have long been built from everyday words — a quality, a place, an event around a birth — rather than drawn from a fixed stock of saints' names. That practice was badly disrupted after English-only schooling was imposed in the islands in the 1890s, and it was the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s onward, with its language immersion schools and revived music and hula, that put words like this back into common naming use. Makoa's appearance in US records belongs to that revival rather than to anything older on the mainland. Its footing today is clearest in Hawai'i and among Hawaiian families in California.
Meaning
fearless, brave, courageous
Makoa is an ordinary adjective in the Hawaiian language, recorded in Hawaiian dictionaries with this sense. The related word koa covers warrior or soldier, and also names the native hardwood tree.
Pronouncing Makoa
mah-KOH-ah
Three syllables, with the stress on the second — Hawaiian usually puts it on the next-to-last. Every vowel gets its own sound; the final -a is a clear "ah", not a swallowed "uh".
Nicknames for Makoa
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
- 1992
- Most boys named
- 2024192 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1114reached in 2024
- Change vs 2024
- −0.5%191 in 2025, from 192
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.
Makoa in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Koa in Hawaiian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Hawaii, Texas.
Makoas among us
people named Makoa are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 8,943 born in 2025 was named Makoa
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 Javan test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Makoa's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Javan climbed just as high around 2004, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Javan's path sketches the road Makoa is walking now.
Makoa is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Makoa is headed
Makoa is on a steep climb — if the curve holds, 2030 could see around 63% more babies given the name than today.
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.
Makoa beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Makoa in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A real word in a living language, with a meaning that is documented and not in dispute — no guesswork to explain.
- Spelled exactly as it sounds, letter for letter, with no silent letters or competing variants to choose between.
- Comes with a ready short form, Koa, which already stands on its own as a name.
- All-vowel-and-open-syllable shape travels easily for Spanish, Japanese and Hawaiian speakers alike.
- Very unlikely to be duplicated in a classroom, while still being familiar to anyone with ties to Hawai'i.
- It is specifically Hawaiian, not a general Polynesian-sounding invention. Many families in the islands feel strongly about Hawaiian names being used with some connection or genuine care, and that conversation is worth having before you commit.
- Outside Hawai'i and the West Coast, expect to correct the stress and the final vowel often — "muh-KOH-uh" is the common mainland default.
- Because Koa is the better-known name, some people will assume Koa is the real one and Makoa a stretched version of it. They are separate Hawaiian words.
- Its rise is very recent, so the name reads as young: for now there are few adult Makoas around to make it feel ordinary.
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What they receive
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Makoa
Masculine · #1118 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Makoas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,500 people named Makoa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Makoa in 2025?
- Makoa ranks #1118 among US boy names in 2025, with 191 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Makoa?
- About 1 in every 8,943 US boys born in 2025 was named Makoa — 191 in all.
- Will my child share the name Makoa with classmates?
- Makoa will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Makoa
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Rylo#1118 · Seven#1118 · Jovanni#1118 · Santi#1118 · Terry#1115 · Kase#1115 · Tiago#1115 · Yazan#1123
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Makoa? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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