Cleopatra
Cleopatra reached its high-water mark in 1974 at number 1,733, and has been recorded 2,484 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 3,577th. About 1,500 Cleopatras are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 31.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Cleopatra
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,484
- Estimated living today
- 1,500
- Median age today
- 31
- Peak year
- 1974
- Best rank
- 1,733rd
- Rank in 2025
- 3,577th
- First recorded
- 1889
How old the living Cleopatras are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,484 babies given the name since 1889, about 1,500 are alive — 62 in every hundred. Roughly 530 of them are children and 240 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1994 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Ancient Greek
From Middle English Cleopatra, from Latin Cleopatra, from Ancient Greek Κλεοπάτρα, meaning "glory of her father", from κλέος (“glory”) + πατήρ (“father”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Cleopatras
- Cleopatra (68 BC–29 BC)queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BCE
- Cleopatra I Syra (died 177 BC)queen of Ptolemaic Egypt
- Cleopatra II of Egypt (183 BC–115 BC)queen of Ptolemaic Egypt
- Cleopatra III of Egypt (160 BC–100 BC)queen of Egypt from 142 to 131 BC and again from 127 to 116 BC
- Cleopatra Selene II (39 BC–4 BC)queen consort of Mauretania from 25 to 5 BC
- Cleopatra IV of Egypt (137 BC–111 BC)Queen of Egypt from 116–115 BC
- Cleopatra Thea (163 BC–120 BC)queen of Seleucid Empire (c. 164–121 BCE)
- Cleopatra Selene of Egypt and Syria (130 BC–68 BC)queen of Egypt and Syria
People named Cleopatra with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Cleopatra is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Cleopatra is most concentrated in Virginia (4.1×), California (3.8×), Texas (2.2×), New York (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1974
The most popular girls’ names the year Cleopatra peaked:
Cleopatra elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Cleopatra | 330 | 1,081st |
| France girls | Cleopatra | 5 | 4,930th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Cleopatra among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Cleopatra | 8 | 15 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Cleopatra against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.