Savannah
Meaning
"treeless plain," from the Taino word zavana by way of Spanish sabana; the grassland word became a graceful Georgia port city, and the city became a name. Southern in flavor, tropical in root, steady since the 1990s
The story
Savannah traveled a long way to reach the nursery. It began as zavana, a Taino word for a treeless plain, passed through Spanish as sabana, and became the English word for open tropical grassland. Georgia gave the word its proper-noun career, lending it to the graceful port city whose oak-shaded squares still trade in romance. As a girls' name it flickered around 1900, spent half a century away from the records, then returned in the 1980s and rose quickly through the 1990s to a 2000s peak, arriving with the broader wave of Southern and place names, Sierra and Cheyenne among them. Hollywood may have helped: the 1982 film Savannah Smiles put the name on screens just before the first stirrings, though that connection is more guess than fact. The curve has settled somewhat since, leaving a name with a singular resume: tropical in root, Spanish in passage, and thoroughly Southern in effect.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Savannah peaked in the 2000s.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
78 people · the #49,053 first name in Brazil · median age 14
Among people named Savannah living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1990s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 21 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Savannah
Most people given the name Savannah in the United States are teenagers or young adults today.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Savannah deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Savannah 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 Savannah fits with your family’s names and surname.
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