Nova — #39 US unisex name

What the Data Says About Nova

The Social Security Administration has registered 51,063 babies named Nova between 1885 and 2024, spanning 140 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Nova currently holds the #39 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2022, when 5,920 babies received it in a single year. Nova is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 3,077 additional births since 1880.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Nova performed strongest in the 2020s, accumulating 26,808 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Nova shows a stable profile with only moderate drift from its peak decade. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Texas, which accounts for 4,144 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by California and Florida. In total, SSA state-level files list Nova in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Nova in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 51,063 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.