girls:
2.5k births since 1881
#3466 (39th percentile)
boys:
838 births since 1972
#3749 (18th percentile)
overall:
3.3k births since 1881
#4730 (39th percentile)
The name Nana is the #4,730 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 3,338 recorded births since 1881. This represents the 38.9% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 38.9% of all names). For girls, it ranks #3,466 (39.3% percentile) for all time with 2,500 births since 1881. For boys, it ranks #3,749 (18.2% percentile) for all time with 838 births since 1972.
Nana first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1881 (1881 for girls and 1972 for boys). Birth data for Nana is available in 139 out of the 143 years between 1881 and 2023 (139 years for girls and 48 years for boys). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Nana has been given predominantly to girls, with 74.9% of all recorded births being female. In 2023, 61.1% of babies named Nana were girls.
For girls, Nana reached its peak popularity in 1921, achieving the 5.0% percentile (ranked #575) with 27 births per million. The name was most common in 1881, with 91 births per million (ranked 1.9% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2018, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Nana ranks #930 for girls (1.8% percentile) with 13 births per million, which is 13.8% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Nana reached its peak popularity in 2003, achieving the 3.2% percentile (ranked #799) with 15 births per million. The name was most common in 2014, with 16 births per million (ranked 3.0% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2018, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Nana ranks #902 for boys (1.0% percentile) with 8 births per million, which is 49.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Nana".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Nana.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Nana", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Nana.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Nana. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 69.0% confident that Nana is pronounced as NA-nuh, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is NAH-nuh, at 31.0% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Nana? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Nana. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Nana, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like N AE1 N AH0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
© 2025 NamePlay.org
Made with ❤️ by Aaron J Becker