Penelope — #28 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Penelope

The Social Security Administration has registered 103,215 babies named Penelope between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Penelope currently holds the #28 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2019, when 6,733 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Penelope performed strongest in the 2010s, accumulating 47,607 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Penelope shows notable generational variation in parental adoption. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 15,390 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and New York. In total, SSA state-level files list Penelope in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Penelope 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 103,215 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.