Seth

144,312 people in America carry this name — ranked #391 of 923.

Carried mostly by Generation Z.

Say it SEHTH

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

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

  • People counted 144,312 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 47.8 about 1 in 2,297 people
  • As a surname 3,488 ranked #8,999 the other way round

What Seth means and where it comes from

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “appointed”.

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.

Seth through the years

163,387 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2000, with 6,725 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 2000s. 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.

What goes well after Seth

One syllable, so a longer middle name gives the whole a rhythm.

Better avoided

  • Seth Steven — same opening
  • Seth Stephen — same opening
  • Seth Samuel — same opening

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.

Going quiet

Seth has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to Generation Z.

Boys or girls: who is called Seth?

99.8% men
263 women

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

Same syllables and stress as Seth

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 1 syllables, stress on the first

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

Who answers to it now

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 82.7%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 3.8%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 6.8%
  • Two or more races — 4.5%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.3%
  • 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.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

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