Baker
- Pronunciation
- [Ba-ker]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Baker
- Origin
- English
About the Name Baker
Baker descends from the Old English bæcere meaning "baker" — referring to the iconic medieval occupational role of bread-making and baked-goods production. The Baker surname has been used continuously in English-speaking countries since the medieval period and is one of the most-common American occupational surnames.
Notable bearers include American actress Carroll O'Connor's niece Carroll Baker (using Baker as a surname, born 1931, the iconic American actress); American Olympic gymnast Simone Biles's coach Aimee Boorman; the iconic American filmmaker Baker Smith; and the iconic American football player Baker Mayfield (using Mayfield as a surname, born 1995, the iconic American NFL quarterback and 2018 NFL #1 overall draft pick).
The name's transition from occupational surname to American first name accelerated through the 2010s and 2020s, riding the broader American taste for occupational surnames as boys' first names alongside Hunter, Carter, Cooper, and Porter. Baker's American climb is very recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2015 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name has been driven partly by the strong Baker Mayfield American sports cultural anchor. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built occupational baker register, and the popular two-syllable -er ending family (Baker, Hunter, Carter, Cooper). Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Anglo-Saxon and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Bake and Baker-bear each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Baker and Bayker have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Old English bæcere.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Baker
US Popularity History (2018–2025)
Annual US births named Baker by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2025 with 1,640 boys named Baker (boy rank #217 that year).
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 Baker 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 Baker the strongest states are Oklahoma, South Dakota, Nebraska.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oklahoma | #132 | 396 |
| 2 | South Dakota | #161 | 44 |
| 3 | Nebraska | #180 | 123 |
| 4 | Kansas | #236 | 166 |
| 5 | Iowa | #269 | 123 |
| 6 | Arkansas | #275 | 114 |
| 7 | Mississippi | #296 | 98 |
| 8 | Idaho | #311 | 43 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #320 | 137 |
| 10 | Alabama | #328 | 163 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #877 | 46 |
| 2 | California | #836 | 130 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #835 | 21 |
| 4 | Florida | #656 | 180 |
| 5 | Arizona | #610 | 68 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | #585 | 106 |
| 7 | Virginia | #572 | 108 |
| 8 | Massachusetts | #558 | 24 |
| 9 | Texas | #518 | 574 |
| 10 | Michigan | #500 | 134 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Baker in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Baker?
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 Baker to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Baker 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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