Howard
- Pronunciation
- [Ho-ward]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Chief Guardian
- Origin
- English
About the Name Howard
Howard is an English surname-turned-given-name whose precise etymology is debated, but the most commonly cited reading — "chief guardian" — is thought to derive from Old Norse elements meaning "high" or "chief" combined with a word for "warden" or "keeper." The Howard family was one of the great noble houses of England, which helped elevate the name from a dynastic surname to a widely used personal name throughout the English-speaking world. By the 19th century it had crossed into American given-name use and settled firmly into the mainstream.
Notable bearers across different fields have shaped the name's cultural texture. Businessman and aviator Howard Hughes (born 1905) built a wide-ranging American career touching aviation, film production, and engineering whose scale and eccentricity made him one of the defining public figures of mid-20th-century America. Entrepreneur Howard Schultz (born 1953) transformed Starbucks Coffee Company from a small Pacific Northwest specialty-coffee retailer into a global brand during his four-decade leadership tenure. Sports broadcaster Howard Cosell, born Howard William Cohen on 25 March 1918 and dying 23 April 1995, became one of American sports journalism's most recognisable voices through his presence on Monday Night Football. Pharmacologist Howard Florey, born 24 September 1898 and dying 21 February 1968, led the Oxford team that turned penicillin from a laboratory curiosity into a usable drug.
Howard appears in the US Social Security top-1000 from 1880, the earliest year of SSA tracking, and peaked in 1919 at rank #24. Its total top-1000 births exceed 288,000. The name lingered in the top-1000 through 2021, sitting at #939 that year, a long gentle arc from early-century dominance to low-key persistence. Recorded variants include Howie and Ward.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Howard
US Popularity History (1880–2021)
Annual US births named Howard by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1921 with 7,713 boys named Howard (boy rank #27 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2021, ranked #939 for boys (241 US births). That's 912 places below its 1921 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 Howard 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 Howard the strongest states are Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minnesota | #502 | 104 |
| 2 | Utah | #581 | 43 |
| 3 | Wisconsin | #583 | 67 |
| 4 | Maryland | #704 | 28 |
| 5 | Colorado | #704 | 42 |
| 6 | Missouri | #759 | 41 |
| 7 | Virginia | #764 | 42 |
| 8 | Washington | #786 | 48 |
| 9 | Indiana | #815 | 34 |
| 10 | Pennsylvania | #827 | 40 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #1,214 | 34 |
| 2 | North Carolina | #927 | 34 |
| 3 | Michigan | #898 | 52 |
| 4 | Tennessee | #894 | 32 |
| 5 | Georgia | #894 | 28 |
| 6 | Ohio | #828 | 79 |
| 7 | Pennsylvania | #827 | 40 |
| 8 | Indiana | #815 | 34 |
| 9 | Washington | #786 | 48 |
| 10 | Virginia | #764 | 42 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Howard in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Howard
4 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Howard.
- Howard Cosell was an American sports journalist.
- Howard Florey was an eminent Australian pathologist who is credited for making penicillin available to the world.
- Howard Hughes — Entrepreneur (1905)
- Howard Schultz — Entrepreneur (1953)
Looking for names like Howard?
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 Howard to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Howard against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).