Eugene
- Pronunciation
- [Eu-gene]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Not recorded
- Origin
- English
Eugene is a name traditionally given to a boy of English origin. Our sources do not preserve a single agreed-upon literal translation for this particular name, so we list its meaning as unrecorded rather than guess at one. Browse more English baby names or search the full library by meaning.
About the Name Eugene
Eugene comes from the Greek eugenēs, a compound of eu ("well, good") and genos ("birth, stock"), meaning "well-born" or "of noble origin." The name was borne by several early Christian saints and four popes, which spread it widely through European Catholic and Orthodox naming traditions before it entered the English-speaking world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its aristocratic etymology — the idea of noble birth as a defining characteristic — gave it a particular resonance in naming cultures shaped by both classical learning and Christian tradition, and its long papal history ensured that it remained a name of ceremony and prestige even as it passed into common use.
Eugene Curran Kelly — better known as Gene Kelly (August 23, 1912 – February 2, 1996) — was an American dancer, choreographer, actor, and director whose athletic, character-driven film musicals during the 1940s and 1950s helped pull screen dance out of formal theatrical convention and into a vernacular American style. His screen presence made the name Eugene feel simultaneously robust and culturally elevated for the generation that watched him. The contrast between the full formal name Eugene — with its European classical weight — and the easy American nickname Gene illustrated a broader mid-century tension between formal and informal naming ideals.
Eugene appears in the US Social Security top-1000 from 1880, the earliest year tracked, and peaked at #20 in 1927. It has proved one of the more resilient classical names in the American record: Eugene remained in the top-1000 continuously through 2024, where it ranked #870 — nearly 145 years of documented top-1000 presence. That unbroken chart run, stretching from the Victorian era through to the present day, places Eugene in a rare category of names whose classical roots have allowed them to outlast the fashion cycles that eliminated so many of their contemporaries. Recorded variants include Geno, Gino, and Owen.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Eugene
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Eugene by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1927 with 9,742 boys named Eugene (boy rank #20 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #943 for boys (249 US births). That's 923 places below its 1927 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 Eugene 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 Eugene the strongest states are Idaho, Oregon, Minnesota.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Idaho | #364 | 19 |
| 2 | Oregon | #546 | 32 |
| 3 | Minnesota | #548 | 78 |
| 4 | Utah | #613 | 19 |
| 5 | Washington | #613 | 79 |
| 6 | Wisconsin | #623 | 46 |
| 7 | Maryland | #667 | 27 |
| 8 | South Carolina | #667 | 17 |
| 9 | Massachusetts | #683 | 25 |
| 10 | Colorado | #684 | 35 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Eugene in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Eugene
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Eugene.
- Eugene Curran Kelly was the famous American film actor and director.
Looking for names like Eugene?
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 Eugene to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Eugene 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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