Hope
- Pronunciation
- [Hope]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Hope
- Origin
- English
About the Name Hope
Hope is one of the small group of English "virtue names" — abstract qualities directly used as personal names — that emerged during the Protestant Reformation alongside Faith, Charity, Patience, Prudence, Mercy, and Grace. The Puritan religious context gave these names theological weight: "hope" in Christian theology refers to the confident expectation of salvation and eternal life, central to Reformed Protestant doctrine. Hope, Faith, and Love (or Charity) form the foundational triad of theological virtues from Saint Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians 13:13.
The name has been continuously used in English-speaking Protestant naming since the 17th century. Notable bearers include the fictional Hope Lange of various American TV soap operas; American actress Hope Lange (1933–2003, Oscar-nominated for Peyton Place, 1957); and the fictional Hope Solo (American soccer goalkeeper, born 1981, World Cup champion).
Hope held a US top-100 girls' rank from 1995 through 2010 — about fifteen years of steady American popularity. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use. The name's appeal is its compact theological depth — one short syllable, instantly readable, the in-built positive virtue register, and tonal versatility across casual and formal registers. The name reads as both classical-religious and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Hopey and the rare Hop each occasionally appear; the longer formal forms include the rare Hopelyn and Hopelyn. International forms include Esperanza (Spanish, meaning hope), Esperance (French/Italian, also meaning hope), Speranza (Italian), and the related Latin spes family. The Spanish Esperanza and Italian Speranza are Hope's etymological siblings rather than direct variants.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Hope
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Hope by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 2,321 girls named Hope (girl rank #146 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #352 for girls (868 US births). That's 206 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 Hope 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 Hope the strongest states are Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alaska | #88 | 41 |
| 2 | Hawaii | #102 | 93 |
| 3 | Rhode Island | #134 | 44 |
| 4 | Montana | #179 | 18 |
| 5 | North Dakota | #184 | 32 |
| 6 | Delaware | #186 | 21 |
| 7 | South Dakota | #192 | 36 |
| 8 | Maine | #195 | 53 |
| 9 | New Mexico | #195 | 87 |
| 10 | Oklahoma | #204 | 180 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama | #349 | 139 |
| 2 | Mississippi | #348 | 85 |
| 3 | South Carolina | #327 | 142 |
| 4 | New York | #317 | 542 |
| 5 | Louisiana | #311 | 163 |
| 6 | Texas | #307 | 994 |
| 7 | Oregon | #306 | 134 |
| 8 | Nebraska | #301 | 68 |
| 9 | Minnesota | #300 | 190 |
| 10 | Kentucky | #299 | 141 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Hope in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Hope?
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 Hope to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Hope against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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