Pono
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Pono has been given to 25 babies in the U.S. since 1996. 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 2007, with 8 recorded.
Babies named Pono, 2007
1 in 500,000
Pono 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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.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 Pono?
Pono had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2007, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 2007
- 1 in 500,000
- 8 of 3,997,748 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 259,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 2007
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 346,380 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Pono sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 2007 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 346,380 children born in 2007 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Pono. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Ponos were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Pono was born before 2004 — so the typical Pono is around 21 today.
- Biggest decade
- 2000s
- 80.0% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 100.0%
- A modern name
- Recorded since 1950
- 25
- People you could plausibly meet
2000s — 80.0% of all recorded uses (20).
Is Pono 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 2007 (8)
- Years since peak
- 18
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Not enough data
- Too few years
Spellings of Pono
Pono is not the most common spelling — Tony is, with 33.7% against Pono's <0.01%.
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 Pono is used
Across 1910–2025, Pono was most concentrated in Hawaii — about 1 in 25,000 boys, against 1 in 26,967 across all states with data.
Most concentrated
- 1Hawaii1 in 25,000
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. Pono has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Pono by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Pono
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Pono
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.