Humanverse

Arden

The boy's name Arden has been in the national records since 1881, with 16,085 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 1,005th. About 11,000 Ardens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 15.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Arden boys named Arden

Girls and boys called Arden

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Arden crossed from boys to girls in 1989, and has stayed there for 35 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 82% girls, and in 2025 it was 54%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 111 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births
16,085
Estimated living today
11,000
Median age today
15
Peak year
2024
Best rank
942nd
Rank in 2025
1,005th
First recorded
1881
Girls / boys
7,518 / 8,567

How old the living Ardens are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 16,085 babies given the name since 1881, about 11,000 are alive — 71 in every hundred. Roughly 6,500 of them are children and 1,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2010 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Derived from the cel-bry ardu (“Arden”) ardu meaning "high".

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Ardens

People named Arden with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Arden is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Arden is most concentrated in Minnesota (2.9×), Wisconsin (2.7×), West Virginia (2.3×), North Dakota (2.2×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2024

The most popular boys’ names the year Arden peaked:

All the names of 2024

Arden elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Arden 325 711th
England and Wales girls Arden 99 2,458th
France boys Arden 60 2,291st
Switzerland boys Arden 36 980th
Scotland boys Arden 25 435th
Belgium boys Arden 11 1,216th
Scotland girls Arden 10 577th
Northern Ireland boys Arden 4 339th
Poland boys Arden 2 birth registrations 745th

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Arden: births by region

RegionCountry Spelling BirthsShare of the region Best rank
German boys Switzerland Arden 29 0.002% 827th
French boys Switzerland Arden 7 0.002% 642nd

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

Arden: rank by region

In 2023, Arden was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

Region Spelling Place Children
Flanders Arden 769 6

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Arden by city

CityYears BirthsBest rank
Berlin boys 2017–2023 3 490th

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Arden among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Country Spelling First forename Any forename
Finland boys Arden 12 19

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Related names

Arden against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Arden with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.