Raven
Feminine · “raven (the bird)”
Raven is given to both — 44,920 girls and 3,333 boys since 1880. See Raven as a boy nameSee other names given to both
Raven is the English word for the bird, unchanged in spelling since Middle English and traceable back to Old English hræfn. The same bird gave Old Norse its personal name Hrafn, and it hides inside older Germanic names like Bertram and Wolfram. One syllable and a half, said exactly as it is written, with an ending that rhymes with haven.
How old is the name Raven?
Raven first appears in US birth records in 1941 — 84 years ago. The typical Raven alive today was born around 1999, making them about 26 years old. About 44,500 people named Raven are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Raven most popular?
Raven peaked in 1993, reaching #139 nationally. Today it ranks #404, 265 places below that high. See the whole 1993 chart.
Where it comes from
From Proto-Germanic *hrabnaz to Raven
The story of Raven
Raven is a word name: English speakers have called the bird a raven for well over a thousand years, and the spelling has barely shifted. Long before it was a given name in America, the raven element was doing work inside Germanic names — the -hram in Bertram, the -fram in Wolfram — and Old Norse used Hrafn on its own as a man's name, which Icelandic still carries alongside the feminine Hrefna. The bird itself sits at the center of stories in more than one tradition: Odin's two ravens in Norse myth, and Raven the creator-trickster in the Haida and Tlingit stories of the Pacific Northwest coast. As an American given name it belongs to the modern habit of taking nouns from the natural world and using them straight.
Meaning
raven (the bird)
From Old English hræfn, going back to a Proto-Germanic word thought to imitate the bird's call; German Rabe and Old Norse hrafn are the same word.
How the name formed
- Proto-Germanic *hrabnaz
- Old English hræfn
- Middle English raven
- Raven
Related forms: Hrafn · Hrefna · Rabe
Pronouncing Raven
RAY-vun
Two syllables, stress on the first, exactly like the bird. No competing pronunciation in English.
Nicknames for Raven
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
- 1941
- Most girls named
- 19942,075 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #139reached in 1993
- Change vs 2023
- −9.1%771 in 2025, from 848
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.
Raven in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Hrafn in Old Norse — related form
- Hrefna in Icelandic — related form
- Rabe in German — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Ravens among us
people named Raven are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 2,085 born in 2025 was named Raven
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 Marianne test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Raven's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Marianne climbed just as high around 1957, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Marianne's path sketches the road Raven is walking now.
Raven 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 Raven is headed
Raven 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.
Raven beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Raven in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the way the ordinary English word is spelled, so it survives dictation over the phone without correction.
- Read correctly on sight by anyone who speaks English; there is no second pronunciation to fend off.
- Yields Rae, a short form that already stands on its own as a name.
- Has been in continuous use in America for generations rather than arriving with a single trend.
- Sits in the same family as older names built on the same element, including Bertram and the Norse Hrafn.
- In Western literature the raven is a bird of omen — Poe's 1845 poem is the reference most English speakers reach for first. In Haida and Tlingit storytelling the same bird is a creator and trickster. Both associations travel with the name.
- US records list Raven overwhelmingly as a girl's name. It is given to boys too, but rarely enough that a boy named Raven will spend some time explaining it.
- Raven is also a familiar character name in comics and animation, which means a stretch of years where the reference gets mentioned. That fades as the shows do.
- Rare enough that most classrooms hold only one — good for distinctiveness, and it does mean the name gets remarked on more often than a common one would.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Raven
Feminine · #404 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Ravens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 44,500 people named Raven are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Raven in 2025?
- Raven ranks #404 among US girl names in 2025, with 771 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Raven?
- About 1 in every 2,085 US girls born in 2025 was named Raven — 771 in all.
- Will my child share the name Raven with classmates?
- Raven will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Raven
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Taylor#403 · Carolina#405 · Logan#402 · Lana#406 · Lauren#401 · Brynn#407 · Angela#408 · Briar#400
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Raven? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Raven and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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