Opal
Opal is a girl's name that peaked in 1918, when it was the 94th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 423rd. About 14,000 Opals are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 46.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Opal boys named Opal
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 74,257
- Estimated living today
- 14,000
- Median age today
- 46
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 94th
- Rank in 2025
- 423rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 73,539 / 718
How old the living Opals are
born that year still alive today
Of the 74,257 babies given the name since 1880, about 14,000 are alive — 19 in every hundred. Roughly 6,000 of them are children and 6,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1979 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
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Opal is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Opal is most concentrated in Oklahoma (6.3×), West Virginia (5.4×), Arkansas (5.3×), Kentucky (4.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular girls’ names the year Opal peaked:
Opal elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Opal | 503 | 526th |
| Scotland girls | Opal | 13 | 632nd |
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.
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.