Savannah: Meaning of Baby Name Savannah

About the Name Savannah

Savannah is a place-name borrowed directly from the city of Savannah, Georgia, founded in 1733 as the colonial capital of the Georgia Colony. The city was named after the Savannah River, which itself takes its name from a Native American group (likely the Shawnee, called Savana or Savannock by 17th-century English colonists). The English word "savanna" — referring to grassland with scattered trees — derives from a separate Spanish source (sabana, from Taíno).

Savannah's transition from place-name to first name in American naming is essentially a 20th-century phenomenon, accelerating dramatically in the 1990s. The single most influential cultural anchor is John Berendt's 1994 nonfiction book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (made into a 1997 film), set in Savannah, Georgia, which gave the city a romantic-Southern-Gothic register that lifted the name's appeal. Earlier, the 1988 film Savannah Smiles contributed to the name's seeding.

Savannah climbed from outside the US top 200 in 1990 to the top 50 girls' rank by 2003 and the top 30 by 2017. The name's appeal is its layered Southern-American register — geographic, romantic, lush — combined with three flowing syllables and a tonal warmth that feels both rooted and aspirational. Notable contemporary bearers include American actress Savannah Guthrie (NBC News anchor), country singer Savannah Brown, and various reality-TV personalities. Common nicknames Savvy, Sav, Annah, and the rare Vannah each carry distinct registers; the alternate spelling Savanah (one N) has its own SSA tracking. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially American.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Savannah

957

Spanish baby names in our dictionary

559

Spanish female names

175

8-letter S-names in our dictionary

481

S-female names total

1993–2025

years of US SSA records (33 total)

173,545

total US births named Savannah (all years)

US Popularity History (1993–2025)

📉 Falling fast: Savannah dropped 68 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#67 in 2020 → #135 in 2025).

Annual US births named Savannah by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 7,101 girls named Savannah (girl rank #37 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #135 for girls (2,141 US births). That's 98 places below its 2000 peak.

Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.

Where in the US Is Savannah Most Popular?

Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Savannah the strongest states are Delaware, North Carolina, New Jersey.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Delaware	#36	160
2	North Carolina	#44	1,552
3	New Jersey	#46	1,280
4	Connecticut	#47	500
5	Pennsylvania	#47	1,689
6	Maryland	#50	766
7	Florida	#54	2,405
8	Virginia	#55	1,112
9	Ohio	#57	1,507
10	South Carolina	#58	617

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Oregon	#152	234
2	North Dakota	#150	67
3	Hawaii	#143	50
4	Nebraska	#140	166
5	West Virginia	#138	155
6	District of Columbia	#136	63
7	Montana	#134	81
8	Maine	#133	86
9	South Dakota	#132	87
10	Colorado	#125	418

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Savannah in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Savanna	From The Open Plain	Female	Spanish
Vanna	God's Gift	Female	Hebrew

Looking for names like Savannah?

A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.

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Compare Savannah to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Savannah against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Savannah vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Savannah vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Savannah vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Savannah vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Savannah vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Savannah vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Savannah vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Savannah vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

Compare to a different name →