Tucker
- Pronunciation
- [Tuc-ker]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Tucker Of Doth
- Origin
- English
About the Name Tucker
Tucker is an English occupational surname meaning "one who tucks cloth" — referring to medieval workers who tucked (compressed and finished) woolen cloth in the cloth-finishing trade, similar to but distinct from the related Walker (see separate entry) and Fuller occupations. The surname appears in English records continuously since at least the 12th century.
The name's transition from surname to American first name is essentially a 21st-century phenomenon, riding the broader American taste for English occupational and surname-style boys' names. Notable bearers as a surname include American football coach Tucker Carlson (American political commentator and television host, born 1969), American actor Tucker Smallwood, and English novelist Tucker Moss. Earlier, the 1988 Francis Ford Coppola film Tucker: The Man and His Dream (about American auto pioneer Preston Tucker) gave the surname brief cultural visibility.
Tucker's American climb took the name from outside the US top 500 in 1995 to the US top 200 boys' rank by 2014 and the top 200 since. The name has been used predominantly in the American South and Midwest, where rural-Americana naming patterns have particular cultural resonance. Common modern usage often pairs Tucker with longer middle names that emphasize its dignified register. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built occupational-craftsman heritage, and the strong masculine sound. Two firm syllables, hard consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-Southern to upwardly-mobile-American. Common nicknames Tuck (the dominant short form, casual and warm) and the rare Tucky each carry distinct registers. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially English-American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Tucker
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Tucker by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2014 with 2,422 boys named Tucker (boy rank #176 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #181 for boys (2,008 US births). That's 5 places below its 2014 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 Tucker 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 Tucker the strongest states are West Virginia, Vermont, Missouri.
Strongest boys-name states
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #555 | 118 |
| 2 | California | #484 | 632 |
| 3 | New Mexico | #432 | 15 |
| 4 | Nevada | #376 | 76 |
| 5 | New York | #357 | 457 |
| 6 | Arizona | #313 | 242 |
| 7 | Texas | #264 | 1,363 |
| 8 | Florida | #246 | 761 |
| 9 | Rhode Island | #237 | 15 |
| 10 | Connecticut | #228 | 147 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Tucker in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Tucker?
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 Tucker to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Tucker 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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