Gage
- Pronunciation
- [Gage]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- "A Pledge, A Pawn"
- Origin
- French
About the Name Gage
Gage descends from the Old French gage meaning "a pledge" or "a pawn" — referring originally to a medieval object given as a guarantee of fulfillment of a promise. The word evolved to refer to challenges (as in throwing down a gauntlet, an early French legal procedure) and to measurements (as in a fuel gauge, a gage of pressure). The name first appears as an Anglo-Norman surname.
Notable bearers include American basketball player Gage Davis; the fictional Gage of Stephen King's Pet Sematary (1983) — the toddler whose tragic death drives the novel's horror plot; and the contemporary American actor Gage Munroe.
The name's transition from surname to American first name accelerated through the 1990s and 2000s, riding the broader American taste for short, distinctive surname-style boys' names alongside Tate, Cade, and Cole. Gage's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 1995 to the US top 200 boys' rank by 2014 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the compact one-syllable structure with the distinctive G-G consonant rhythm, and the modern visual presence. The name reads as both classical-Anglo-Norman and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Gager occasionally appears. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially American; the original Old French gage remains the etymological source.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Gage
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Gage by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2003 with 2,939 boys named Gage (boy rank #136 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #973 for boys (235 US births). That's 837 places below its 2003 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 Gage 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 Gage the strongest states are Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montana | #168 | 32 |
| 2 | New Hampshire | #175 | 22 |
| 3 | North Dakota | #184 | 37 |
| 4 | Maine | #200 | 29 |
| 5 | South Dakota | #215 | 33 |
| 6 | West Virginia | #216 | 68 |
| 7 | Hawaii | #270 | 15 |
| 8 | Nevada | #290 | 80 |
| 9 | New Mexico | #292 | 41 |
| 10 | Nebraska | #299 | 57 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #749 | 161 |
| 2 | California | #659 | 439 |
| 3 | Illinois | #647 | 174 |
| 4 | Florida | #641 | 278 |
| 5 | New Jersey | #620 | 54 |
| 6 | Georgia | #589 | 156 |
| 7 | Texas | #557 | 587 |
| 8 | Alabama | #539 | 75 |
| 9 | Virginia | #530 | 128 |
| 10 | Massachusetts | #520 | 57 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Gage in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gaige | Male | Irish |
Looking for names like Gage?
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 Gage to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Gage 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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