Titan
Masculine · Greek roots · “one of the Titans”
Titan is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 5,496 boys against 5 girls since 1880.
Titan is the English name for the elder gods of Greek myth — Kronos, Rhea, Hyperion — the generation that ruled before the Olympians. The word traveled from Hesiod into Latin and then into everyday English for anything vast, and in the nineteenth century the astronomer John Herschel handed it to Saturn's largest moon. Two syllables, both already familiar to any English speaker: TYE-tun.
How old is the name Titan?
Titan first appears in US birth records in 1979 — 46 years ago. The typical Titan is a kid of about 8 — this name's wave is very recent. About 5,400 people named Titan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Titan most popular?
Titan peaked in 2017, reaching #619 nationally. Today it ranks #1290, 671 places below that high. See the whole 2017 chart.
Titan appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Titanes (Greek) to Titan
The story of Titan
In Greek cosmology the Titanes were the twelve children of Ouranos and Gaia, and Hesiod's Theogony tells of their long war with Zeus and the younger gods. Latin took the word over unchanged, and by the seventeenth century English writers were using 'titan' as an ordinary noun for anything of enormous scale — a habit that gave us titanic, and the metal titanium, named for the same reason. John Herschel drew on the myth again when he named Saturn's biggest moon in the 1840s. Its life as a given name is much newer than any of that: Titan arrived on American birth records within living memory, and the wave is recent enough that nearly everyone carrying it is still a child.
Meaning
one of the Titans, the elder gods of Greek myth; in English, a giant or a figure of great power
The sense is settled; the root of the Greek word Titánes is not. Hesiod, writing his Theogony, linked it to titaínein, 'to strain or stretch' — a poet's etymology rather than a linguistic one, and scholars generally treat the word as pre-Greek and unexplained.
How the name formed
- TitanesGreek
- TitanLatin
- TitanEnglish
Related forms: Τιτάν · Titán · Titano · Titan · Titan · Титан
Pronouncing Titan
TYE-tun
Stress on the first syllable, exactly as in the English word titan or the moon of Saturn. Spanish and Greek put the stress on the second syllable instead, which is worth knowing in a bilingual family.
Nicknames for Titan
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
- 1979
- Most boys named
- 2017421 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #619reached in 2017
- Change vs 2024
- −31.4%151 in 2025, from 220
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.
Titan in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Τιτάν in Greek — same name
- Titán in Spanish — spelling variant
- Titano in Italian — related form
- Titan in French — same name
- Titan in German — same name
- Титан in Russian — transliteration
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Florida, California.
Titans among us
people named Titan are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 11,312 born in 2025 was named Titan
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 Hayward test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Titan's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Hayward climbed just as high around 1903, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Hayward's path sketches the road Titan is walking now.
Titan 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 Titan is headed
Titan is easing off slowly — about 23% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
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.
Titan beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Titan in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the way it sounds, and already a word English speakers know — it rarely needs repeating or clarifying over the phone.
- Two syllables, one strong stress, and it sits easily beside most single-syllable surnames.
- The same spelling works in French and German and needs only an accent in Spanish, so it travels with almost no adjustment.
- The word behind it has an unbroken record from Hesiod to modern astronomy, which gives a new given name a long backstory.
- It is a word with a very large meaning attached, and it arrives loaded: strength, scale, the mythic. Some people hear that as splendid, others as a lot to hand a small person. Worth saying aloud in a sentence with your surname before deciding.
- The word is attached to several famous things beyond the myth — the Tennessee Titans, the Titanic, a deep-sea submersible that made grim news. None of it lands on the child, but the associations will come up.
- Very few American Titans have reached adulthood yet, so the name has no grown-up track record here — it still reads as belonging to one recent moment rather than to every generation. The wave has begun to recede, which may be an advantage.
- US records show it only for boys, so anyone using it for a daughter should expect forms and teachers to assume otherwise.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Titan to the vote.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Titan
Masculine · Greek roots · #1290 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Titans are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,400 people named Titan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Titan in 2025?
- Titan ranks #1290 among US boy names in 2025, with 151 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Titan?
- About 1 in every 11,312 US boys born in 2025 was named Titan — 151 in all.
- Will my child share the name Titan with classmates?
- Titan will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Titan
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Anas#1290 · Amarion#1290 · Maison#1290 · Achilles#1290 · Asiah#1290 · Yunus#1290 · Rudra#1287 · Cristiano#1287
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Titan? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Titan and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Cast your vote
Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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