Polk
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Polk has been given to 80 babies in the U.S. since 1887. 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 1917, with 8 recorded.
Babies named Polk, 1954
1 in 796,000
Polk 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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.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 Polk?
Polk had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1954, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 1954
- 1 in 796,000
- 5 of 3,979,464 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 408,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 1954
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 551,672 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Polk sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 1954 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 551,672 children born in 1954 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Polk. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Polks were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Polk was born before 1918 — so the typical Polk is around 107 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1910s
- 36.3% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 6.3%
- Mostly a past generation
- Recorded since 1950
- 5
- People you could plausibly meet
1910s — 36.3% of all recorded uses (29).
Is Polk 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 1917 (8)
- Years since peak
- 108
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Shifting
- 23.5% average annual change
Spellings of Polk
Polk is not the most common spelling — Cole is, with 66.5% against Polk's 0.03%.
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 Polk is used
Across 1910–2025, Polk was most concentrated in Tennessee — about 1 in — boys, against 1 in 614,214 across all states with data.
Most concentrated
- 1Tennessee1 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. Polk has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Polk by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Polk
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Polk
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.