Heather
Heather reached its high-water mark in 1975 at number 3, and has been recorded 527,387 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,261st. About 502,000 Heathers are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 44.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Heather boys named Heather
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 527,387
- Estimated living today
- 502,000
- Median age today
- 44
- Peak year
- 1975
- Best rank
- 3rd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,261st
- First recorded
- 1914
- Girls / boys
- 525,910 / 1,477
How old the living Heathers are
born that year still alive today
Of the 527,387 babies given the name since 1914, about 502,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 5,100 of them are children and 6,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1981 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 English
From heather; the given name is one of the plant names taken up in the 19th century. The surname is habitational, also meaning someone living on a heath.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Heathers
- Heather Graham (born 1970)American actress
- Heather Locklear (born 1961)American actress
- Heather O'Rourke (1975–1988)American actress
- Heather Morris (born 1987)American actress, dancer, singer, and model
- Heather Watson (born 1992)British female tennis player
- Heather Langenkamp (born 1964)American actress
- Heather Mills (born 1968)former glamour model, activist
- Heather Matarazzo (born 1982)American actress
People named Heather with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Heather is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Heather is most concentrated in Alaska (2.1×), Vermont (2.0×), New Hampshire (1.9×), Wyoming (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1975
The most popular girls’ names the year Heather peaked:
Heather elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland girls | Heather | 7,056 | 38th |
| England and Wales girls | Heather | 5,543 | 78th |
| New Zealand girls | Heather | 4,351 | 15th |
| Ireland girls | Heather | 1,826 | 91st |
| France girls | Heather | 760 | 849th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Heather | 82 | 172nd |
| Belgium girls | Heather | 17 | 1,033rd |
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.
Heather: rank by region
In 2009, Heather was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Heather | 532 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Heather 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 | Heather | 21 | 35 |
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
Heather 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.