Autumn

What does Autumn mean?

Autumn takes its meaning directly from the season. It is an English word name with an older history reaching back to Latin autumnus. The name brings the year's harvest season into everyday use as a first name, with an immediately recognizable connection to the natural world.

Although the word is much older, Autumn became broadly established as a given name during the twentieth century. Its American popularity continued growing into the early twenty-first century, when it reached its highest national rank.

A season becomes a first name

Autumn belongs with seasonal names such as Summer and Winter. Its particular imagery includes ripening fruit, changing leaves, and the transition toward colder weather. Those associations come from the season itself, giving the name a meaning that remains easy to recognize in English.

The name became more widely used from the 1960s onward, although American records contain earlier examples. The French counterpart Automne offers another seasonal name from the same word family.

The season in poetry

Autumn has an especially rich literary association through John Keats's poem To Autumn, written in September 1819. Keats describes a landscape filled with fruit, crops, and the work of gathering the harvest.

The poem moves from abundance to the sounds of the season's closing days. Its attention to orchards, fields, and birds makes autumn a vivid setting rather than simply a date on the calendar. For readers familiar with Keats, the name can recall one of English poetry's most celebrated seasonal portraits.

Autumn de Wilde and film

Director Autumn de Wilde gives the name a contemporary artistic connection. Her 2020 film Emma. adapted Jane Austen's novel, with a screenplay by Eleanor Catton and Anya Taylor-Joy playing Emma Woodhouse.

The story follows Emma's matchmaking, social misjudgments, and changing understanding of her own feelings. De Wilde brought experience in rock photography and music videos to the project, developing its distinctive visual world around Austen's comedy of manners.

Pronunciation and related names

Autumn is pronounced AW-tum, with stress on the first syllable. The final n is silent. Its two-syllable sound is shorter than the six-letter spelling may initially suggest.

Automne is the French counterpart. Summer and Winter share the seasonal theme, while names such as Hazel and Amber suggest related colors and natural imagery without sharing Autumn's Latin root.

Autumn in the United States

Autumn's largest annual American girls' count was 4,208 in 1998. Its best rank came in 2013, when it reached No. 64. It remained in the top hundred in 2025 at No. 88, following No. 69 in 2015 and No. 82 in 2020. That history makes it an established choice across several recent generations.

How popular is Autumn?

In 2025, Autumn ranked #88 among girls in the United States, with 2,805 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1910; its largest annual count was 4,208 in 1998. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.