Cleave
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Cleave has been given to 403 babies in the U.S. since 1885. 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 1920, with 18 recorded.
Babies named Cleave, 1972
1 in 629,000
Cleave 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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.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 Cleave?
Cleave had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1972, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 1972
- 1 in 629,000
- 5 of 3,142,796 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 324,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 1972
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 435,685 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Cleave sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 1972 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 435,685 children born in 1972 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Cleave. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Cleaves were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Cleave was born before 1925 — so the typical Cleave is around 100 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1920s
- 26.6% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 17.9%
- Spread across generations
- Recorded since 1950
- 67
- People you could plausibly meet
1920s — 26.6% of all recorded uses (107).
Is Cleave 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 1920 (18)
- Years since peak
- 105
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Shifting
- 22.0% average annual change
Spellings of Cleave
Cleave is not the most common spelling — Cleve is, with 37.9% against Cleave's 3.4%.
Where Cleave is used
Across 1910–2025, Cleave was most concentrated in Texas — about 1 in — boys, against 1 in 2,210,576 across all states with data.
Most concentrated
- 1Texas1 in —
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. Cleave has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Cleave by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Cleave
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Cleave
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.