Author
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Author has been given to 2,173 babies in the U.S. since 1880. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1933, with 59 recorded.
Babies named Author, 1995
1 in 732,000
Author over time, 1880–2025
Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.
How common is Author?
Author had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1995, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 1995
- 1 in 732,000
- 5 of 3,660,254 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 381,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 1995
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 507,420 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Author sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 1995 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 507,420 children born in 1995 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Author. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Authors were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Author was born before 1936 — so the typical Author is around 89 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1920s
- 20.8% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 5.0%
- Mostly a past generation
- Recorded since 1950
- 522
- People you could plausibly meet
1920s — 20.8% of all recorded uses (452).
Is Author rising or falling?
Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.
- Rank vs 1 year ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 5 years ago
- New entry
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Births vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not published both years
- Share of its own peak
- 0%
- Peak was 1933 (59)
- Years since peak
- 92
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Volatile
- 42.4% average annual change
Spellings of Author
Author is not the most common spelling — Arthur is, with 86.7% against Author's 0.34%.
Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.
Where Author is used
Across 1910–2025, Author was most concentrated in Alabama — about 1 in 25,000 boys, against 1 in 56,628 across all states with data. It was least common in Virginia (1 in —).
Most concentrated
- 1Alabama1 in 25,000
- 2Mississippi1 in 25,000
- 3Georgia1 in 33,333
- 4Louisiana1 in 50,000
- 5South Carolina1 in 50,000
- 6Arkansas1 in 100,000
- 7North Carolina1 in 100,000
- 8Tennessee1 in 100,000
Shading is the share of that state's recorded boys given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Author has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Author by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Author
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Names with a curve like Author
Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Author, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.
Sibling names for Author
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.