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Nickname-proof names

50 girls’ names and 50 boys’ names carry no short form anywhere in our records. They are short to begin with: one word, one or two syllables, five letters at most. And none of them is a name we hold as mainly the short form of a longer one, the way Max is short for Maximilian. They are ranked by how many children were given each name in the United States in 2025, girls and boys counted together, which is why a name carried by both sexes can sit above one with a larger single row.

Girls’ names

Boys’ names

The rule, in words. The name is one word of five letters or fewer, with one or two syllables. No short form is filed under it in our nickname files, and no family it belongs to carries a short, pet or contracted form. And it is not a name we hold as mainly the short form of a longer one. A name with a page of its own listing what it is short for, like Max, is left out. So is a name our shared short-form file or one of our name families calls a short, pet or contracted form, and a name whose own meaning calls it the short version of another one. A name that turns up once as one longer name’s nickname still counts here as a name in its own right.

Counts are the number of children given the name in the United States in 2025, from US Social Security records, which leave out any name given to fewer than five children in a year.

A family can still invent a nickname for anything. This page says only what our records hold.