girls:
46k births since 1885
#614 (89th percentile)
boys:
2.9k births since 1880
#2336 (49th percentile)
overall:
48.9k births since 1880
#1094 (86th percentile)
The name Nova is the #1,094 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 48,855 recorded births since 1880. This represents the 85.9% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 85.9% of all names). For girls, it ranks #614 (89.3% percentile) for all time with 45,957 births since 1885. For boys, it ranks #2,336 (49.0% percentile) for all time with 2,898 births since 1880.
Nova has appeared in U.S. birth records since the beginning of our dataset in 1880 (since 1880 for boys and since 1885 for girls). Birth data for Nova is available in 140 out of the 144 years between 1880 and 2023 (139 years for girls and 60 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 Nova has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 94.1% of all recorded births being female. Interestingly, until around 1885, the name was more popular for boys (100.0% boys from 1880 to 1884), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (94.1% girls from 1885 to 2023).
For girls, Nova reached its peak popularity in 2022, achieving the 96.8% percentile (ranked #32) with 3,297 births per million. The name was most common in 2022, with 3,297 births per million (ranked 96.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 1992, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Nova ranks #34 for girls (96.5% percentile) with 3,000 births per million, which is 91.0% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Nova reached its peak popularity in 2020, achieving the 32.8% percentile (ranked #606) with 171 births per million. The name was most common in 2020, with 171 births per million (ranked 32.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 1996, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Nova ranks #682 for boys (25.2% percentile) with 129 births per million, which is 75.2% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Nova".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Nova.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Nova", 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 Nova.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Nova. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Nova is pronounced as NOH-vuh, which has 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 Nova? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Nova. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Nova, 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 OW1 V 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.
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