girls:
9.7k births since 1886
#1620 (72nd percentile)
boys:
9.8k births since 1880
#1183 (74th percentile)
overall:
19.5k births since 1880
#1839 (76th percentile)
The name Unknown is the #1,839 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 19,504 recorded births since 1880. This represents the 76.2% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 76.2% of all names). For boys, it ranks #1,183 (74.2% percentile) for all time with 9,774 births since 1880. For girls, it ranks #1,620 (71.7% percentile) for all time with 9,730 births since 1886.
Unknown has appeared in U.S. birth records since the beginning of our dataset in 1880 (since 1880 for boys and since 1886 for girls). Birth data for Unknown is available in 143 out of the 144 years between 1880 and 2023 (141 years for boys and 128 years for girls). 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 Unknown is truly gender-neutral, with nearly equal distribution between boys and girls. In 2023, 62.0% of babies named Unknown were boys.
For boys, Unknown reached its peak popularity in 1954, achieving the 53.0% percentile (ranked #290) with 265 births per million. The name was most common in 1954, with 265 births per million (ranked 53.0% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2018, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Unknown ranks #849 for boys (6.8% percentile) with 37 births per million, which is 13.8% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Unknown reached its peak popularity in 1954, achieving the 54.4% percentile (ranked #330) with 323 births per million. The name was most common in 1952, with 327 births per million (ranked 53.6% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2019, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Unknown ranks #911 for girls (3.8% percentile) with 23 births per million, which is 7.2% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Unknown".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Unknown.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Unknown", 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 Unknown.
Our model has identified 3 different pronunciations for the name Unknown. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 71.8% confident that Unknown is pronounced as uhn-NOHN, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is uhnk-NOHN, at 17.9% 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 Unknown? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Unknown. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Unknown, 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 AH0 N N OW1 N) 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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