Minor
Masculine · “lesser”
Minor is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 1,728 boys against 12 girls since 1880.
A minor was a younger son long before it was a person under age. The Latin word means simply lesser, and in English it did service for the junior of two brothers, the smaller of two things and the less important of two matters for centuries before the legal sense narrowed it to somebody who has not reached twenty-one.
How old is the name Minor?
Minor was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Minor alive today was born around 1929, making them about 96 years old. About 500 people named Minor are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Minor most popular?
Minor peaked in 1880, reaching #373 nationally. See the whole 1880 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From minor to Minor
The story of Minor
It is one letter from a completely unrelated word and the records do not distinguish them. A miner digs; a minor is younger; the two come from different languages and different roots, and in nineteenth-century American registers they appear interchangeably, because clerks wrote what they heard and the two are identical in speech. Genealogists working on families with either name run into the problem constantly. A single vowel, no audible difference, and two words that have nothing whatever to do with each other filed under one another for a hundred years.
Meaning
lesser, younger
The Latin comparative, used as a surname to distinguish a younger man from an older one of the same name. It is the same word that stands behind minus and minister.
How the name formed
- minor
- Minor
Pronouncing Minor
MY-nur
Two syllables with the stress at the front. It is said identically to the word for somebody who digs, and nothing distinguishes them.
Nicknames for Minor
Limited
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
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 192042 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #373reached in 1880
- Change vs 2013
- −16.7%5 in 2015, from 6
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.
Minors among us
people named Minor 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
Minor 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
- The meaning is transparent and easy to explain.
- The spelling and the sound agree completely.
- It is genuinely rare with a real Latin word behind it.
- It is an ordinary English word meaning lesser, which is a lot to carry.
- The spelling is recorded for a few girls, but nearly every child with it is a boy.
- The generation that used it is now gone entirely.
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Minor
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Minors are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Minor are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Minor in 2025?
- Minor is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Minor with classmates?
- Minor will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Michael#21 · Matthew#32 · Mark#244 · Mason#39 · Martin#335 · Marvin#699 · Melvin#958 · Marcus#258
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Minor? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Minor and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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