Wells
Masculine · Old English roots · “springs”
Wells is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 6,989 boys against 175 girls since 1880.
Wells started as water: the springs that gave the Somerset cathedral city its name, and the countless village wells that English families were named for. From ground to map to surname to given name, it has stayed one clean syllable the whole way, and it still lands with a single soft chime.
How old is the name Wells?
Wells first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. Wells is overwhelmingly a brand-new baby name right now — most Wellss are still in diapers. About 6,400 people named Wells are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Wells most popular?
Wells peaked in 2025, reaching #345 nationally. Today it ranks #345, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Where it comes from
From wella (Old English) to Wells
The story of Wells
The root is Old English wella, a spring of water, which became Middle English welle. Places built around such springs took the name — Wells in Somerset, England's smallest city, whose cathedral stands beside the springs of St Andrew, and Wells-next-the-Sea on the Norfolk coast. Medieval records show people surnamed de Welles or atte Welle, meaning simply the family living by them, and the surname traveled to America with English settlers and stayed common there. The English novelist H. G. Wells kept the surname in wide public view through the twentieth century. Its use as a first name belongs to the much more recent American habit of moving surnames to the front of the name.
Meaning
springs, wells
From Old English wella/wiella, a spring or stream — a plural, meaning someone who lived where the springs were.
How the name formed
- wellaOld English
- welleMiddle English
- WellsEnglish place name
- WellsEnglish surname
- Wellsgiven name
Related forms: Welles · Weller
Pronouncing Wells
WELZ
One syllable, rhyming with bells. The final s is voiced, like a z. There is no second pronunciation to correct.
Nicknames for Wells
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
- 1881
- Most boys named
- 2025944 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #345reached in 2025
- Change vs 2023
- +35.6%944 in 2025, from 696
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.
Wells in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Welles in English — spelling variant
- Weller in English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Utah, North Carolina.
Wellss among us
people named Wells are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,809 born in 2025 was named Wells
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 Lyndon test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Wells's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lyndon climbed just as high around 1964, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lyndon's path sketches the road Wells is walking now.
Wells 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 Wells is headed
Wells looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 34% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds. Its history is short or jumpy, though, so read this as a sketch rather than a promise.
Low 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.
Wells beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Wells in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- One syllable, one obvious spelling: anyone who knows the English word can write it after hearing it once.
- No pronunciation ambiguity in English, and none of the stress questions that longer surname-names raise.
- A documented record stretching from Old English through medieval place and surname use to the present — it was a real name long before it was a baby name.
- Sits in the well-worn American pattern of surnames used as first names, so it reads as familiar even to people meeting it new.
- The name already ends in s, which makes possessives and plurals fiddly for a lifetime — Wells's book, the Wells family. Not a problem, just a small recurring one.
- It shares its sound with the bank Wells Fargo and, in the singular, with wellness branding. Neither is an obstacle, but both come up.
- Very few adults carry it as a first name, so for now it is heard almost entirely on small children. That will change as this generation grows up, but early on it may need a sentence of explanation.
- Short forms are limited to friendly extensions like Wellsy; there is no established formal alternative to fall back on.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Wells
Masculine · Old English roots · #345 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Wellss are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 6,400 people named Wells are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Wells in 2025?
- Wells ranks #345 among US boy names in 2025, with 944 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Wells?
- About 1 in every 1,809 US boys born in 2025 was named Wells — 944 in all.
- Will my child share the name Wells with classmates?
- Wells will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Wells
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Russell#345 · Sterling#345 · Wade#344 · Colin#343 · Kade#348 · Jax#342 · Ezequiel#348 · Cairo#341
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Wells? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Wells and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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