Pota
Girls' nameMeaning not yet documented
Pota has been given to 33 babies in the U.S. since 1918. 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 1918, with 9 recorded.
Babies named Pota, 1971
1 in 686,000
Pota 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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.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 Pota?
Pota had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1971, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 1971
- 1 in 686,000
- 5 of 3,432,187 births
- Among girls only
- 1 in 333,000
- <0.01% of girls
- Rank, 1971
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 475,803 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Pota sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 1971 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 475,803 children born in 1971 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Pota. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Potas were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Pota was born before 1922 — so the typical Pota is around 103 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1920s
- 57.6% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 15.2%
- Spread across generations
- Recorded since 1950
- 5
- People you could plausibly meet
1920s — 57.6% of all recorded uses (19).
Is Pota 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 1918 (9)
- Years since peak
- 107
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Not enough data
- Too few years
Spellings of Pota
Pota is not the most common spelling — Rita is, with 16.7% against Pota'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 Pota is used
Across 1910–2025, Pota was most concentrated in Massachusetts — about 1 in — girls, against 1 in 330,835 across all states with data.
Most concentrated
- 1Massachusetts1 in —
Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls 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. Pota has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Pota around the world
Where Pota ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.
- South Australia1962–1968#679in 1968
Popularity data from Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.
Pota by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Pota
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Pota
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.