Trace
- Pronunciation
- [Trace]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- From Thracia. Surname Dating From Before The Norman Conquest.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Trace
Trace is an English surname name with roots stretching back before the Norman Conquest, traditionally associated with settlers or travelers from Thracia — the ancient region spanning parts of modern Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. As a given name, it carries the clean, one-syllable authority that has made surname transfers so appealing in American baby-naming: no ambiguity about spelling, no fussy syllables, and a meaning that evokes both a physical mark left on a landscape and a lineage worth following.
Country music singer Trace Adkins (born 1962) has been the name's most visible American bearer — his three-decade career producing multiple country chart hits, including Hot Country Songs number-one singles "You're Gonna Miss This" (2008) and others noted in his career arc. Adkins's presence in country music kept the name in cultural circulation through exactly the period when it was gaining ground as a given name for boys.
Trace first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000, peaked in 2003 at rank #496, and has maintained a remarkably consistent presence ever since. By 2023 it had climbed back to rank #677 with 403 boys given the name, and in 2024 it sat at rank #704 with 380 births — suggesting renewed energy rather than a slow fade. More than 9,808 boys received the name across its top-1000 years. Its durability speaks to the perennial appeal of short, strong names that feel both rooted and modern at once.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Trace
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Trace by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2008 with 534 boys named Trace (boy rank #510 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #758 for boys (340 US births). That's 248 places below its 2008 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.
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Where in the US Is Trace Most Popular?
Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Trace the strongest states are Mississippi, Idaho, Kansas.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #428 | 57 |
| 2 | Idaho | #473 | 15 |
| 3 | Kansas | #494 | 44 |
| 4 | Kentucky | #499 | 78 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | #503 | 179 |
| 6 | Louisiana | #519 | 97 |
| 7 | Iowa | #524 | 63 |
| 8 | Arkansas | #555 | 30 |
| 9 | Indiana | #571 | 113 |
| 10 | Alabama | #585 | 70 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #994 | 69 |
| 2 | Illinois | #850 | 71 |
| 3 | Maryland | #849 | 22 |
| 4 | Minnesota | #837 | 28 |
| 5 | Florida | #834 | 105 |
| 6 | Washington | #816 | 47 |
| 7 | Arizona | #788 | 52 |
| 8 | Georgia | #769 | 86 |
| 9 | Texas | #742 | 317 |
| 10 | Virginia | #736 | 47 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Trace in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Famous People Named Trace
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Trace.
- Trace Adkins — Country Singer (1962)
Looking for names like Trace?
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.
Compare Trace to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Trace against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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