Indiana
Meaning
land of the Indians (US state name, from Latin India + -ana); immortalized by Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
The story
Indiana is a place name first, coined from Latin to mean land of the Indians, and for decades it drifted along the edges of American baby records before disappearing from them entirely at midcentury. Then in 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark introduced Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford's whip-cracking archaeologist, and the name promptly reappeared in the records that same decade; we cannot prove the film did it, but the timing is hard to ignore. George Lucas, famously, borrowed the name from his own dog. Since the 2000s Indiana has held a small, steady presence, used for boys and girls alike, still uncommon enough to feel like a find. It is a rare kind of name, a map word turned movie legend, carrying dusty fedora romance and open-road Americana in roughly equal measure.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Indiana peaked in the 2000s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
1,324 people · the #6,854 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 142,857 · median age 31
Among people named Indiana living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1990s than in any other decade.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Indiana
Most people given the name Indiana in the United States are children or teenagers today. The name belongs to this generation.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Indiana deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Indiana truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Indiana fits with your family’s names and surname.
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