Heather: Meaning of Baby Name Heather

About the Name Heather

Heather takes its name directly from the flowering shrub Calluna vulgaris, the low-growing evergreen plant that carpets the moorlands and peat bogs of Scotland and northern England in sweeps of purple and pink. The word entered Middle English from Old Norse heiðr, and the plant itself has long been a symbol of Scotland — associated with rugged landscapes, resilience, and natural beauty. As a given name Heather belongs to the Victorian and twentieth-century tradition of botanical names for girls, alongside Rose, Violet, and Fern.

The name first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1967 and rose quickly to its national peak of #3 in 1975, accumulating more than 500,000 recorded top-1000 births during its nearly fifty-year chart run. That peak placed it among the most popular girl's names of the 1970s. The name declined steadily through the 1980s and 1990s and last appeared in the top-1000 in 2016, at rank #977 — a slow fade that mirrors the generational aging of the name's core cohort.

Heather today feels like a quintessential 1970s name: naturalistic, unpretentious, and tied to a specific era of American naming culture. Its connection to the Scottish highlands gives it a quiet romantic undertone. The only recorded variant is Heath, the masculine surname form that shares the same botanical root.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Heather

5,642

English baby names in our dictionary

2,251

English female names

120

7-letter H-names in our dictionary

259

H-female names total

1967–2016

years of US SSA records (49 total)

500,311

total US births named Heather (all years)

US Popularity History (1967–2016)

📉 Falling fast: Heather dropped 266 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#711 in 2011 → #977 in 2016).

Annual US births named Heather by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1975 with 24,302 girls named Heather (girl rank #3 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2016, ranked #977 for girls (274 US births). That's 974 places below its 1975 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.

Where in the US Is Heather Most Popular?

Average girl-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 girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Heather the strongest states are Oklahoma, Utah, Missouri.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Oklahoma	#625	20
2	Utah	#761	15
3	Missouri	#833	38
4	Massachusetts	#838	17
5	Virginia	#840	34
6	Washington	#844	46
7	Michigan	#893	26
8	Wisconsin	#894	15
9	Colorado	#910	16
10	California	#997	94

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	California	#997	94
2	Colorado	#910	16
3	Wisconsin	#894	15
4	Michigan	#893	26
5	Washington	#844	46
6	Virginia	#840	34
7	Massachusetts	#838	17
8	Missouri	#833	38
9	Utah	#761	15
10	Oklahoma	#625	20

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Heather in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Heath	Untended Land Where Flowering Shrubs Grow. Surname And Place-Name.	Male	English

Looking for names like Heather?

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.

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Compare Heather to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Heather against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Heather vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Heather vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Heather vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Heather vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Heather vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Heather vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Heather vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Heather vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

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