How popular is the baby name Ariel in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Ariel.
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The country of Israel releases two sets of baby name rankings: one for the Gregorian year (e.g., 2024), the other for the Hebrew year.
I don’t usually post the Hebrew-year rankings, but I was intrigued by the latest set, which was released a couple of weeks before the end of 5785 (Oct. 2024 to Sep. 2025, roughly).
Below are Israel’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names — both overall and among Jewish residents specifically — for the Hebrew year 5785:
Girls names
Top girl names, all babies
Top girl names, Jewish babies
Avigail Miriam Libi Tamar Sara Lia Yael Ella Ayala Noa
Avigail Tamar Libi Yael Sara Ella Noa Lia Ayala Esther
Boy names
Top boy names, all babies
Top boy names, Jewish babies
Muhammad Yosef Adam David Lavie/Lavi Ariel Omar Rafael Uri Yehuda
Lavie/Lavi Ariel David Rafael Uri Yehuda Eliya Ari Eitan Micha’el
The news release suggested that Lavi, which means “lion” in Hebrew, became the most popular name for Jewish boys due to the influence of Israel’s Operation Am KeLavi (“a people like a lion”), which was launched against Iran in June of 2025. (The war lasted 12 days.)
Except…Lavi has been close to the top spot for several years now. It ranked #2 among Jewish boys in both 2023 and 2020, for instance. So did the headlines really push Lavi to #1, or would it have ended up there regardless?
The country of Ukraine is located in Eastern Europe. It shares a border with Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova.
According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice, the top baby names of 2023 in the center-west part of the country — the city of Kyiv plus five nearby oblasts (Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy) — were Mariya (Maria) and Yeva (Eva) for girls and Mark and Oleksandr (Alexander) for boys.
Here’s a visual of the area:
Map of Ukraine
Below you’ll find the top names for each of the six locations. Rankings weren’t specified, so, in the tables below, I’ve written the names in the order in which they appeared in the news release.
Kyiv (city)
Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, has a population of over 2.9 million. Here are Kyiv’s top baby names of 2023:
Vakula is the protagonist of the short story “Christmas Eve” (1832) by Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol (Ukranian: Mykola Hohol).
P.S. Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice released the top baby names of 2022 for Kyiv and each of the five oblasts, but not for the center-west part of the country overall.
In 1981, the unisex name Ariel was given to roughly the same number of girls and boys.
Just one year later, it was given to almost twice as many girls as boys:
Girls named Ariel
Boys named Ariel
1984
636 [rank: 362nd]
281 [rank: 504th]
1983
650 [rank: 348th]
315 [rank: 471st]
1982
584 [rank: 394th]
294 [rank: 497th]
1981
228 [rank: 721st]
236 [rank: 553rd]
1980
181 [rank: 853rd]
239 [rank: 554th]
What caused this sudden interest in Ariel as a girl name?
My guess is a television character.
In February of 1982, Swedish-born Ariel Aldrin (played by actress Judith Blazer) was introduced on the long-running CBS soap opera As The World Turns.
During her time on the show, Ariel worked as a model at the local fashion emporium (“Fashions, Ltd.”) and married two different men: Dr. John Dixon (who she’d mistakenly believed was wealthy) and Burke Donovan (who’s son, she’d discovered, was the heir to a fortune). Neither relationship lasted very long. She “left town to pursue a European count” in 1984.
P.S. Earlier in the ’80s, the name may have been influenced (slightly) by Princess Ariel, one of the main characters of the Saturday morning cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian (1980-1981).
According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Ariel was given more often to boys than to girls from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s.
Then, in 1982, the girls’ usage surged ahead of the boys’ usage. Less than a decade later, Ariel reached the girls’ top 100 — and stayed there for three years straight.
What caused this growing interest in Ariel as a girl name?
A series of pop-culture nudges, the first of which came along in the late 1970s:
This initial increase corresponds to the success of a pop song called “Ariel” [vid] by singer-songwriter Dean Friedman.
The quirky song — about the narrator’s date with “a free spirited, pot-smoking, vegetarian Jewish girl” named Ariel (pronounced AIR-ee-el) — was released in April of 1977 and peaked at #26 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in late June.
During a recent interview, Friedman was asked about the song’s many namesakes. He replied,
Well, you’re right, actually, there are definitely a lot of Ariels out there of a certain age that were not named after a mermaid. And so that’s always a nice surprise, when someone will come up and introduce themselves and say, “I was named after your song.”
The Hebrew name Ariel comprises two elements, the first of which means “lion” and the second of which means “god.” It’s pronounced ahr-ee-EL by Hebrew speakers.
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