Meadow
Feminine · Old English roots · “A grassy field”
Meadow is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 12,343 girls against 12 boys since 1880.
Meadow is one of the oldest words in English used as one of the newest kinds of name: Old English speakers called a field mown for hay a mǣd, and the word has survived every change in the language since. It says exactly what it is — two open syllables, MED-oh, with nothing in it a stranger has to ask about. It has appeared quietly in American records for more than a century and is climbing now.
How old is the name Meadow?
Meadow first appears in US birth records in 1914 — 111 years ago. The typical Meadow is a kid of about 7 — this name's wave is very recent. About 12,000 people named Meadow are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Meadow most popular?
Meadow peaked in 2025, reaching #286 nationally. Today it ranks #286, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Where it comes from
From mǣd (Old English) to Meadow
The story of Meadow
The word goes back to Old English mǣd, with its inflected form mǣdwe giving the shape we spell today; it belongs to the same root as "mow", so the oldest sense is land kept for cutting. Through Middle English medwe it settled into modern "meadow" and stayed an everyday word, which is why it needs no translating. Its life as a first name is far more recent and belongs to the English-speaking tradition of naming children after landscape — the same impulse behind Willow, Brook and Heath. The HBO series The Sopranos, which ran from 1999 to 2007, gave the name its best-known bearer in the character Meadow Soprano, and put it in front of a very large audience.
Meaning
A grassy field, especially one mown for hay
From Old English mǣd / mǣdwe, from the same Germanic root as the verb "mow" — the land's defining feature was that it was cut for hay rather than grazed or ploughed.
How the name formed
- mǣdOld English
- mǣdwe
- medweMiddle English
- Meadow
Pronouncing Meadow
MED-oh
Said exactly like the ordinary English word, stress on the first syllable. The "ea" is short, as in "bread", not long as in "bead".
Nicknames for Meadow
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
- 1914
- Most girls named
- 20251,078 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #286reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +13.1%1,078 in 2025, from 953
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.
Meadow in other languages
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York.
Meadows among us
people named Meadow are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 1,491 born in 2025 was named Meadow
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 Elisabeth test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Meadow's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Elisabeth climbed just as high around 2001, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Elisabeth's path sketches the road Meadow is walking now.
Meadow 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 Meadow is headed
Meadow looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 22% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
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.
Meadow beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Meadow in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelling and pronunciation are settled by the dictionary — almost every English speaker can write it correctly after hearing it once.
- An ordinary English word with a documented line back to Old English, so the meaning is plain and uncontested.
- On American records for over a century, which puts it well ahead of most landscape names in longevity.
- Fits comfortably beside the established nature-word names without duplicating any of them.
- For many adults the name still points straight to Meadow Soprano in The Sopranos. That association is fading with time, but it is the first thing some people will mention.
- It is rising fast. A child named Meadow now will very likely be the only one in her class, but the name may be considerably more familiar by the time she finishes school.
- There is no traditional short form and no formal-sounding variant, so Meadow is what she will be called in every setting, from the playground to a résumé.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Meadow to the vote.
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What they receive
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Meadow
Feminine · Old English roots · #286 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Meadows are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 12,000 people named Meadow are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Meadow in 2025?
- Meadow ranks #286 among US girl names in 2025, with 1,078 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Meadow?
- About 1 in every 1,491 US girls born in 2025 was named Meadow — 1,078 in all.
- Will my child share the name Meadow with classmates?
- Meadow will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Meadow
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Julieta#285 · Gia#287 · Antonella#284 · Milani#288 · Rosie#283 · Adelaide#289 · Sylvie#282 · Sawyer#290
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Meadow? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Meadow and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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