Aaron

494,237 people in America carry this name — ranked #89 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it EH ruhn

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

EH1 R AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 494,237 2020 Census
  • Rank #89 Common
  • Per 100,000 163.6 about 1 in 671 people

Where Aaron comes from and what it means

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “mountain”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Aaron through the years

596,354 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1989, with 15,411 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80s 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1980s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names that fit Aaron

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Aaron Andrew — same opening
  • Aaron Anthony — same opening
  • Aaron Nicholas — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Is Aaron used for boys or for girls?

99.5% men
2,666 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Names built the same way as Aaron

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 63.0%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 11.7%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 16.4%
  • Two or more races — 4.2%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 3.9%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

The states where Aaron is most common

In Alaska the name is given 1.7 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Alaska ×1.7
  • Hawaii ×1.6
  • Wyoming ×1.5
  • Kansas ×1.4
  • New Mexico ×1.4

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Hebrew origin