Yale
Masculine · “fertile upland”
Yale is a Welsh place name, and the university is named after a man rather than after the place. Elihu Yale was a merchant who made a fortune with the East India Company, gave a collection of books and goods to a struggling Connecticut college, and had the whole institution named after him for what was, even then, a fairly modest donation.
How old is the name Yale?
Yale first appears in US birth records in 1908 — 117 years ago. The typical Yale alive today was born around 1953, making them about 72 years old. About 800 people named Yale are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Yale most popular?
Yale peaked in 1908, reaching #1217 nationally. See the whole 1908 chart.
Where it comes from
From A Welsh district name meaning fertile upland to Yale
The story of Yale
The gift was three bales of goods, several hundred books and a portrait of the king. The college sold the goods for around five hundred and sixty pounds, which was useful but not transformative, and named itself after the donor in the hope of more, which never came. Elihu Yale had been born in Boston, taken to England as a child, and spent twenty years in Madras, where he became governor and was eventually removed for private trading; his fortune was large and its origins were not entirely clean. He never visited the college. There is also a lock company founded by an unrelated man of the same surname, so the two most famous uses of the word in America come from two different families and neither from the Welsh hills.
Meaning
fertile upland
The Welsh place name behind the surname means fertile or arable upland, and the reading is documented. The family took its name from the district in north-east Wales. As a personal name it is a surname used directly, in the American manner, and it carries the geography rather than any description of a person.
How the name formed
- A Welsh district name meaning fertile upland
- A surname taken from the district
- A Connecticut college renamed after a merchant
- Yale as an American first name from the nineteenth century
Related forms: Ial
Pronouncing Yale
YALE
One syllable, rhyming with pale. The Welsh original is said quite differently, with two syllables and a vowel English does not have, so the surname is an anglicization rather than a transcription.
Nicknames for Yale
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
- 1908
- Most boys named
- 192929 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1217reached in 1908
- Change vs 2018
- −28.6%5 in 2022, from 7
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.
Yale in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ial in Welsh — related form
Yales among us
people named Yale 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
Yale 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
- One syllable, no ambiguity, and nothing to teach anybody.
- It has a genuine Welsh place behind it as well as an American institution.
- It pairs cleanly with any longer middle name.
- The university is the first association for essentially every American.
- It reads as a surname, which is what it is.
- It is very firmly of the early twentieth century and has had no revival.
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Yale
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Yales are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Yale are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Yale in 2025?
- Yale is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Yale with classmates?
- Yale will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More Y names
The most-given names starting with Y, all years combined.
Yahir#814 · Yusuf#449 · Yosef#663 · Yehuda#740 · Yousef#744 · Yisroel#824 · Yaakov#1024 · Yitzchok#910
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Yale? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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