The post 15 Autumn-Inspired Baby Names and How Popular They’ve Become first appeared on Crafting Your Home.
Olivia and Liam took the top spots on the Social Security Administration’s 2025 list for the seventh consecutive year, according to the agency’s May announcement. Autumn-flavored names never threatened that pairing. They play out lower on the chart, where a few hundred births can move a name dozens of places.
Names researcher Laura Wattenberg told AARP that top 10 lists tend to bore some readers and reassure others with their familiarity. The fifteen names below cover the territory beneath that list, from a girls’ top 25 fixture to a month name given to just 40 babies. Counts come from Social Security card applications filed at birth, which the agency calls the nation’s authoritative source for naming trends.
Hazel
Twenty girls’ names outrank Hazel, which landed 21st in 2025 with 6,318 births, according to Social Security Administration data. Charlotte and Eleanor rank ahead of it. A year earlier, the name held 19th place with 6,401 babies, and its high point came in 2023 at 18th.
Shell-brown and faintly green, the hazel tree and its nut carry an October palette with no help from marketing. A two-place slide looks minor on paper, yet slow erosion near the top of a chart is usually how a peak gets confirmed in hindsight.
Willow
Weeping willows turn a buttery yellow late in the season, which gives Willow a real autumn claim despite its spring-green reputation.
Social Security data place the name 44th among girls in 2025 with 4,763 births, three spots below its 41st-place showing in 2024.
Even after that retreat it outranks Emilia and Nova, which sit right behind it at 45th and 46th. A three-place move is closer to noise than to a verdict on a name this established.
Autumn
The season’s own name landed 88th in 2025 with 2,805 births. Across 2020 through 2025, the agency’s decade table ranks it 72nd with 18,742 girls, so the latest single-year slot sits well below the six-year standing. A name that trails its own average is usually past its crest, and Autumn now has the numbers of a classic settling into middle age.
Sienna
Sienna arrived in the top 100 in 2025, landing 94th with 2,659 births. Ailany, Amara, Georgia and Juniper entered the same bracket alongside it. The name comes from the Italian city and doubles as the burnt sienna pigment of an artist’s palette, a shade Nameberry glosses as orange red. Color names travel well in fall because the season is a color story before it is anything else.
Ember
Fire words are having a moment. The agency’s own 2025 release singled out the boys’ name Kasai, which means fire in Japanese and Swahili, for a leap of 1,108 places to 639.
Ember arrived at the same idea through plain English, entering the top 1,000 for girls in 2009 and the top 200 in 2019, according to its Wikipedia entry. A dying coal is an odd picture to hang on a newborn, yet parents keep choosing the glow over the decline.
Bonfire smoke and chimney weather supply the season’s share of the pull.
Rowan
Boys pushed Rowan to 59th in 2025 with 5,212 births in Social Security data. Analysis of 2024 figures ranked it third among boys and seventh among girls on its fall list. The Irish root Ruadhán means little red-haired one, and the mountain ash that shares the name flares scarlet with berries in the cold months. Few names fit a nursery and a hillside so neatly.
Aspen
Aspen peaked in 2022 at 196th among girls and has drifted to 266th in the 2025 Social Security data, a 70-place slide in three years.
Colorado ski-town glamour and golden, trembling leaves give the name two different fan bases, and neither seems to be renewing its membership.
Names borrowed from tourist geography often run hot and then cool fast, and Aspen’s trajectory reads that way. A top 300 finish still keeps it well ahead of Amber and Marigold, both outside the top 500.
Sage
The 2025 data compiled by Nameberry put the girls’ version of Sage at 160th with 1,853 births and the boys’ at 456th with 684. Both peaked in 2022, girls at 143rd and boys at 387th, so the herb has cooled in step across the sexes. Thanksgiving stuffing gives Sage its seasonal credential, and few kitchen words move so easily onto a birth certificate. Drift this gradual means a parent choosing it today is joining a plateau, not a rush.
Related: The Fastest-Rising Baby Names of 2026 All Share One Surprising Theme
Marigold
Marigold jumped 103 places to 590th in 2025, according to The Bump’s read of Social Security records, with 498 births.
Reference entries credit part of the revival to a child character on Downton Abbey, and the name has held a top 1,000 spot since 2021.
The flower keeps blooming into the first frosts, which makes it a truer autumn flower than most. That leap still amounts to roughly 500 babies nationwide.
Amber
Amber peaked in 1986 with 17,009 births. The 2025 count was 576, good for 520th place and about 3 percent of that high-water mark. The same compilation puts the average living Amber at 37 years old, which makes the name a generational marker more than a seasonal one.
Fossil resin in honey tones suits October light nicely, though parents have clearly stopped buying that argument in bulk.
Maple
Mama Natural’s Social Security tables show 73 baby Maples in 2020. Nameberry’s 2025 entry shows 221, a threefold rise that still leaves the name at 1,092nd for girls, outside the agency’s public top 1,000. Its previous peak came in 1902 at 957th, so the name has yet to beat a century-old high. Sugar maples paint the northern autumn in orange and red, and tripling from a tiny base is the cheapest kind of growth.
October
October went to 40 babies in 2025, ranking 3,758th, per Nameberry’s page on Social Security data. Its high mark was 2,606th in 2008. Parents fill the real month with gourds and porch lights and then mostly decline to name a child for it.
The agency’s limits page shows why names like this hide: its top 1,000 covers about 67 percent of girls’ names in 2025, leaving roughly a third of baby girls outside the public chart.
Hunter
Hunter ranked 35th among boys in 2000 and stood at 130th in 2025 with 2,761 births, Nameberry’s Social Security tracking shows.
Parents are drifting from hard-edged names like Hunter, Wilder and Gunner toward gentler sounds. Hunting season supplies the autumn tie, an association that may cost the name as tastes soften. Few names on this list have fallen so far from such a high perch.
Related: 17 Baby names that could go extinct in 2026
Forrest
Forrest ranked 374th among boys in 2025 with 850 births, according to Nameberry’s Social Security figures.
Parents evidently want the extra letter, which lends a slightly formal, surname feel to a name whose root means dweller near the woods. Leaf-peeping country supplies the setting, and the spelling supplies the polish.
Boys get fewer autumn names because boys’ names cluster
Wilder peaked in 2021 at 366th and has slid to about 431st in 2025 with 743 births, Nameberry’s page shows. Hazel drew 6,318 births in 2025 while Forrest drew 850, a gap of more than seven to one.
Name Almanac’s 2025 tally shows why: the top 100 boys’ names captured 649,546 births, while the top 100 girls’ names captured 506,210. Boys crowd into familiar names, leaving woodland picks like Wilder fighting for scraps.
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