The Craziest Baby Names in America

Updated Wed Jul 24 2024

It’s a strange honor to be among the craziest baby names in the US. These wild and wacky choices are truly unusual names. They push the boundaries of what could even be considered a baby name — Trigger, really? — and make us wonder what these parents were thinking.

To qualify, the names had to be listed in the Social Security Administration’s extended data, which lists all the names given to five or more babies of a single sex in a given year. Meaning that not just one, but multiple sets of parents chose these crazy baby names for their children in 2023, the most recent year counted.

Below, our picks for the craziest baby names in America right now.

Bad Boys

Tough guy (or rather, Tuff guy) names are the antidote to the soft, vowel-heavy boy names we’ve been seeing lately, and both sets are on the rise — albeit, among very different groups of parents.

The classics of this genre have paved the way for these newer, more aggressive options. Hunter transforms into Shooter, Gunner leads to Trigger, and Maverick becomes Renegade.

These are the craziest bad boys to chart in the most recent US statistics:

Cash Money

Names that reference money or wealth are one of the breakout mini-trends of the 2020s, with the debut of Currency and Kurrency on the charts, reemergence of Money, and rise of the -illion names.

The arrival of Nick Cannon’s son Zillion Heir — one of the craziest celebrity baby names of the decade — has only intensified this trend.

Vices and Sins

It’s generally wise to stay away from names with obvious negative connotations, but not all parents follow that advice.

In 2023, parents named their children after anti-virtues such as Envy and Vanity as well as their own vices — whether it be to play Roulette in Vegas or imbibe in Indica or Sativa.

Aspirations

Everyone wants the best for their child, but these parents take it to another level. These not-so-subtle word names reveal parents’ greatest hopes and dreams for their children, whether it’s for them to be a Genius and Prodigy or Gorgeous and Majestic.

Aspirational names can be a lot to live up to — with these names, probably too much. And yet some of the names listed here could be future hits.

The class of aspirational word names is rising quickly with help from star power. Recent weird celebrity baby names in this category include Jessica Hart's Glorious Hart, Da Brat's True Legend, and Nick Cannon's Beautiful Zeppelin.

People and Characters

Typically, parents who choose to name their child after a famous figure — real or fictional — do so with the hope that the namesake will influence or inspire their child. And perhaps the parents who named their children Hades, Lucifer, and Capone did want their sons and daughters to take away a certain message from their names, although we can’t imagine what that might be.

Positive namesakes are also included on this list. These unique celebrity names are so tied to a single person that it’s difficult to picture them on anyone else, such as DaVinci, Zorro, and Rambo.

The Best (Craziest) of the Rest

These crazy baby names eschew the categories above but were too wild to leave out altogether. We have wacky new sci-fi names (Matrix, Ghost), animal names (Viper, Rooster), names for STEM babies (Theory, Khemistry), and more.

About the Author

Sophie Kihm

Sophie Kihm's Personal Website

Sophie Kihm has been writing for Nameberry since 2015. She has contributed stories on the top 2020s names, Gen Z names, and cottagecore baby names. Sophie is Nameberry’s resident Name Guru to the Stars, where she suggests names for celebrity babies. She also manages the Nameberry Instagram and Pinterest.

Sophie Kihm's articles on names have run on People, Today, The Huffington Post, and more. She has been quoted as a name expert by The Washington Post, People, The Huffington Post, and more. You can follow her personally on Instagram or Pinterest, or contact her at sophie@nameberry.com. Sophie lives in Chicago.

View all of Sophie Kihm's articles