Taft
Masculine · “homestead”
Taft is a homestead. The word behind it is Norse — a toft was the plot of ground a house stood on — and it became an English surname and then, briefly and for an obvious reason, an American given name.
How old is the name Taft?
Taft first appears in US birth records in 1907 — 118 years ago. The typical Taft alive today was born around 1957, making them about 68 years old. About 900 people named Taft are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Taft most popular?
Taft peaked in 1908, reaching #272 nationally. Today it ranks #7679, 7,407 places below that high. See the whole 1908 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From topt to Taft
The story of Taft
Toft place names are scattered across the north and east of England, where Danish settlement was heaviest, and families from them carried the surname to America. American families named sons after presidents as a matter of course through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — Washington, Jackson, Grant, Cleveland, Roosevelt — and Taft appears in the registers with a sharp peak in 1909, the year of the inauguration.
Meaning
homestead, house plot
From the Old Norse topt, 'a plot of ground with a building on it', which entered northern English as toft and became the surname Taft and Toft. It described the legal unit of a house and its yard, and the word survives in English place names across the former Danelaw.
How the name formed
- topt
- toft
- Taft
Related forms: Toft · Topt
Pronouncing Taft
TAFT
One syllable. Said identically in every English accent.
Nicknames for Taft
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
- 1907
- Most boys named
- 190952 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #272reached in 1908
- Change vs 2023
- 0.0%10 in 2025, from 10
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.
Taft in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Toft in English — spelling variant
- Topt in Norse — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Utah.
Tafts among us
people named Taft are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 170,808 born in 2025 was named Taft
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
Fashion outlook
Taft 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
Taft beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Taft in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is concrete and points at a documented legal and physical unit of Norse settlement.
- One syllable, crisp, and never mispronounced.
- It records a real and now largely forgotten American naming practice.
- It reads as a surname to nearly everyone, which is what it is.
- The presidential association is the only reason it has a chart history, and it is tightly dated to 1909.
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Taft
Masculine · #7679 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Tafts are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 900 people named Taft are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Taft in 2025?
- Taft ranks #7679 among US boy names in 2025, with 10 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Taft?
- About 1 in every 170,808 US boys born in 2025 was named Taft — 10 in all.
- Will my child share the name Taft with classmates?
- Taft will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Taft
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Early#7679 · Obie#7679 · Huston#7679 · Knute#7679 · Rance#7679 · Blain#7679 · Doyle#7679 · Millard#7679
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Taft? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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