Baby Name Length Analysis – The Long and the Short of it

Ever wonder about the most popular baby name length?

Well, if we take the 6,692 baby names that have ever ranked in the U.S. top 1,000 (1880-2006) as our sample, the average number of letters per name is…drum roll please…6, rounded up from 5.9. (The sample’s median and mode are also 6.)

The shortest names consist of 2 letters, the longest of 11 letters. Here’s the full breakdown (plus some example names):

• 10 two-letter names (Bo, Jo, Lu, Ty)
• 209 three-letter names (Amy, Gus, Una, Val)
• 812 four-letter names (Iola, Kirk, Lily, Rhys)
• 1,574 five-letter names (Betty, David, Kayla, Pedro)
• 1,907 six-letter names (Amanda, Lester, Skyler, Zayden)
• 1,323 seven-letter names (Esteban, Jillian, Quinton, Yolanda)
• 582 eight-letter names (Nicholas, Octavius, Isabella, Theodora)
• 216 nine-letter names (Dominique, Ferdinand, Katherine, Sebastian)
• 52 ten-letter names (Alessandro, Rutherford, Shirleyann, Wilhelmina)
• 7 eleven-letter names (Bartholomew, Christopher, Margueritta, Maximillian)