Finn
- Pronunciation
- [Finn]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Fair. Mythology: Finn Mac Cumhail Was Legendary Irish 3Rd Century Hero Similar To The English Robin Hood. His Warrior-Followers Were Named Finians.
- Origin
- Irish
About the Name Finn
Finn descends from the Old Irish Fionn, meaning "fair-haired" or "blond" or, more poetically, "bright" or "shining." The name's overwhelming Irish anchor is Fionn mac Cumhaill (anglicized as Finn MacCool), the legendary Irish hunter-warrior of the 3rd-century Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology. Fionn led the Fianna, a band of warriors who served the High King of Ireland, and his exploits — gaining the wisdom of the Salmon of Knowledge by accidentally tasting it, defeating various magical foes, the Giant's Causeway origin myth — are foundational to medieval Irish literature.
The name has been used continuously in Ireland and Scotland for over a millennium. Its broader English-language adoption is essentially a late-20th- and 21st-century phenomenon. The single most influential modern fictional Finn is Finn Hudson, the football-quarterback character of Glee (2009–2013) played by Cory Monteith, whose 2013 death gave the character a tragic afterlife. Other notable Finns include the protagonist of Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and the Stormtrooper-protagonist FN-2187 (renamed Finn) of the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
Finn's American climb is part of the broader 21st-century surge in Irish-Gaelic boys' names alongside Liam, Aiden, and Declan. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 2000 to the US top 100 boys' rank by 2018 and has held that range since. The name's appeal is its compact Irish elegance — one short syllable, instantly readable, distinctly Celtic without obscurity, and the in-built mythological-warrior register from the Fionn anchor. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Finny, Finch, and the rare Fin each occasionally appear; the longer formal forms Finnegan and Finnian are sometimes used as Finn's official-document version. International forms include the original Irish Fionn and the rare Scottish Gaelic Fingal.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Finn
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Finn by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2017 with 2,381 boys named Finn (boy rank #167 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #206 for boys (1,702 US births). That's 39 places below its 2017 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 Finn 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 Finn the strongest states are Vermont, Utah, Maine.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vermont | #68 | 64 |
| 2 | Utah | #78 | 572 |
| 3 | Maine | #91 | 153 |
| 4 | Wyoming | #95 | 41 |
| 5 | New Hampshire | #96 | 139 |
| 6 | Massachusetts | #100 | 668 |
| 7 | Minnesota | #104 | 598 |
| 8 | Montana | #113 | 105 |
| 9 | Washington | #116 | 673 |
| 10 | North Dakota | #116 | 110 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #370 | 69 |
| 2 | Texas | #308 | 1,122 |
| 3 | Nevada | #277 | 112 |
| 4 | Oklahoma | #262 | 181 |
| 5 | Arkansas | #259 | 130 |
| 6 | Alabama | #252 | 208 |
| 7 | New Mexico | #252 | 43 |
| 8 | Georgia | #251 | 452 |
| 9 | Arizona | #229 | 343 |
| 10 | West Virginia | #225 | 90 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Finn in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Finn?
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 Finn to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Finn 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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