Ebony
- Pronunciation
- [E-bo-ny]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Ablack Wood. Strength.
- Origin
- Greek
About the Name Ebony
Ebony takes its name from the dark, prized hardwood of the same name, a word that traveled through Greek and Latin from an ancient Egyptian source. Beyond its literal sense, it carries connotations of strength, depth, and rich beauty, and it rose as a name celebrating those qualities — its meaning rooted in the lustrous, durable wood itself rather than in any older personal-name tradition. That natural imagery gives it a distinctive, evocative power.
The three syllables, E-bo-ny, give it a smooth, lyrical rhythm, and its familiar -y ending reads as soft and approachable. The name has a warm, evocative quality, a word-name whose imagery of darkness, depth, and durability lends it a quiet strength. It feels both elegant and grounded, drawing its appeal from the rich associations of the wood it names rather than from fashion alone.
Ebony first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000 — its peak year, at rank #553 — and remained on the chart through 2005, ranking #961 in that final year, with 2,123 top-1000 births in total. A recorded variant is Eban. Its concentrated early-2000s run marks Ebony as a name carrying the clear stylistic stamp of that period, closely tied to the naming tastes of its decade and to the wider appeal of rich, evocative word-names drawn from nature.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Ebony
US Popularity History (2000–2005)
Annual US births named Ebony by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 474 girls named Ebony (girl rank #553 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2005, ranked #961 for girls (257 US births). That's 408 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.
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Where in the US Is Ebony Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2002–2011 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 Ebony the strongest states are Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Louisiana | #452 | 54 |
| 2 | Mississippi | #479 | 41 |
| 3 | Arkansas | #515 | 16 |
| 4 | Alabama | #525 | 36 |
| 5 | South Carolina | #531 | 48 |
| 6 | Maryland | #625 | 48 |
| 7 | New Jersey | #628 | 35 |
| 8 | Georgia | #649 | 79 |
| 9 | North Carolina | #674 | 49 |
| 10 | Missouri | #677 | 21 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2002–2011. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Ebony in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eban | Rock | Male | Hebrew |
Looking for names like Ebony?
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 Ebony to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Ebony against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).