Scientist Names
These names honor particular scientists and mathematicians through their given names. The notes identify the person behind each choice; the collection celebrates their work without claiming that a name predicts a child’s abilities.
| Save name | Name & connection | History 1926–2025, yearly counts; individually scaled | Babies 2025 · rank | 5-year rank movement | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mary Anning, the fossil collector and paleontology pioneer. | 2,230#125 | Down 2 rank positions in five years | 1921 | ||
Richard Feynman, the physicist. | 1,505#234 | Down 26 rank positions in five years | 1946 | ||
Charles Darwin, the naturalist. | 5,898#48 | Down 2 rank positions in five years | 1947 | ||
Barbara McClintock, the geneticist and Nobel laureate. | 264#968 | Down 82 rank positions in five years | 1947 | ||
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, the chemist and Nobel laureate. | 743#421 | Up 114 rank positions in five years | 1924 | ||
Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician. | 1,670#186 | Down 50 rank positions in five years | 1990 | ||
Rachel Carson, the marine biologist and writer. | 1,225#250 | Down 24 rank positions in five years | 1985 | ||
Marie Curie, the physicist and chemist. | 474#618 | Down 1 rank positions in five years | 1920 | ||
Albert Einstein, the physicist. | 461#614 | Down 91 rank positions in five years | 1921 | ||
Jane Goodall, the primatologist. | 1,380#221 | Up 43 rank positions in five years | 1947 | ||
Isaac Newton, the physicist and mathematician. | 5,953#47 | Down 8 rank positions in five years | 2007 | ||
Caroline Herschel, the astronomer. | 2,646#96 | Down 25 rank positions in five years | 2000 | ||
Max Planck, the physicist. | 2,025#180 | Down 33 rank positions in five years | 2009 | ||
Vera Rubin, the astronomer. | 1,482#205 | Up 41 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the astronomer. | 2,506#108 | Up 39 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
Ada Lovelace, the mathematician associated with the Analytical Engine. | 1,401#219 | Down 34 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the astronomer. | 65#2,666 | Down 239 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
Rosalind Franklin, the chemist and crystallographer. | 140#1,521 | Down 90 rank positions in five years | 1965 | ||
Erwin Schrodinger, the physicist. | 57#2,402 | Up 42 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
Emmy Noether, the mathematician. | 695#445 | Up 73 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
Enrico Fermi, the physicist. | 24#4,289 | Down 692 rank positions in five years | 1921 | ||
Werner Heisenberg, the physicist. | 10#8,210 | new | 1930 | ||
Lise Meitner, the physicist. | —Unranked | — | 1959 | ||
Niels Bohr, the physicist. | 15#6,057 | Up 852 rank positions in five years | 1957 |
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Sources & methodology
Meaning summaries use Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0) and referenced name histories. Each name’s detail page includes its sources.
Membership on this list is editorial — we chose names that genuinely fit the theme. Every number is from official birth data: "—" means the name had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, which makes it a genuinely rare pick today, not an invalid one. The dot marks whether the stats shown are for the girls' or boys' use of the name.