Studio Ghibli Names
Studio Ghibli films offer Japanese names alongside names from European settings and fantasy worlds. The notes identify the film connection; the U.S. figures describe the spelling itself, regardless of why individual families chose it.
| Save name | Name & connection | History 1926–2025, yearly counts; individually scaled | Babies 2025 · rank | 5-year rank movement | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sosuke's mother in Ponyo. | 256#991 | Up 46 rank positions in five years | 1965 | ||
The young heroine of When Marnie Was There. | 2,521#107 | Down 39 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
The singer and hotel owner in Porco Rosso. | 90#2,085 | Down 473 rank positions in five years | 1967 | ||
The heroine of Howl's Moving Castle. | 3,984#55 | Up 20 rank positions in five years | 2011 | ||
The pilot also known as Porco Rosso. | 862#370 | Up 23 rank positions in five years | 2005 | ||
The artist who befriends Kiki in Kiki's Delivery Service. | 29#4,746 | Down 1 rank positions in five years | 1967 | ||
The cat figure in Whisper of the Heart and The Cat Returns. | 135#1,370 | Up 135 rank positions in five years | 2008 | ||
The mysterious girl in When Marnie Was There. | 85#2,186 | Up 1,943 rank positions in five years | 1969 | ||
The forest-raised heroine of Princess Mononoke. | 8#11,751 | new | 1950 | ||
The younger sister in My Neighbor Totoro. | 117#1,744 | Up 875 rank positions in five years | 2025 | ||
The young witch in Kiki's Delivery Service. | 13#8,114 | Down 1,330 rank positions in five years | 1975 | ||
The air-pirate leader in Castle in the Sky. | —Unranked | — | 1917 | ||
The farmer in Only Yesterday. | —Unranked | — | 1921 | ||
The aspiring violin maker in Whisper of the Heart. | 8#9,565 | Down 1,617 rank positions in five years | 2007 | ||
The central character in The Wind Rises. | 5#12,881 | Down 1,643 rank positions in five years | 1918 | ||
The heroine of The Cat Returns. | 14#7,616 | Up 83 rank positions in five years | 2023 | ||
The small heroine of The Secret World of Arrietty. | 22#5,577 | Up 2,880 rank positions in five years | 2023 | ||
The girl at the center of Spirited Away. | —Unranked | — | 2007 | ||
The older sister in My Neighbor Totoro. | —Unranked | — | 1920 | ||
The central character in Only Yesterday. | —Unranked | — | 1917 | ||
The boy in Ponyo. | —Unranked | — | 2018 | ||
The mysterious boy in Spirited Away. | 5#12,689 | Down 3,680 rank positions in five years | 2024 | ||
The wizard in Howl's Moving Castle. | —Unranked | — | 2024 | ||
The heroine of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, released before Ghibli's founding. | —Unranked | — | 2022 |
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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.