Hudson
- Pronunciation
- [Hud-son]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Son Of The Hooded Man
- Origin
- English
About the Name Hudson
Hudson is an English patronymic surname meaning "son of Hudd" — Hudd being a medieval pet form of either Hugh or Richard. The surname appears in English records from at least the 13th century. Like several other surname-derived first names that have surged in modern American naming, Hudson combines two elements that contemporary parents seem to value: the strong consonant ending in -son and the suggestion of dignified ancestry.
The name's most influential historical bearer is Henry Hudson (c. 1565–1611), the English explorer who, while working for the Dutch East India Company, sailed up the river that now bears his name (the Hudson River) in 1609, opening what would become the New Netherland and later New York colony. Hudson's later expeditions explored Hudson Bay (Canada) before he was abandoned by mutinous crew members in 1611 and presumably perished. The geographic legacy — Hudson River, Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait — gives the name a distinct American/Canadian-frontier register.
Hudson's transition from surname to first name is almost entirely a 21st-century American phenomenon. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 2000 to the top 50 by 2018. The appeal sits at the intersection of contemporary American naming preferences: surname-style, two firm syllables, geographic Americana, and a tonal versatility across formal and informal registers. Notable contemporary bearers are largely modern or fictional — actor Kate Hudson's son Bingham Hawn Bellamy uses the surname-as-given-name, and Hudson is a recurring fictional character name in modern American media. Common nicknames Hud and Sonny appear occasionally; there are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is recent and English-specific.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Hudson
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Hudson by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2025 with 8,583 boys named Hudson (boy rank #17 that year).
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 Hudson 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 Hudson the strongest states are South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Dakota | #7 | 394 |
| 2 | North Dakota | #9 | 370 |
| 3 | Utah | #12 | 1,460 |
| 4 | Iowa | #13 | 1,006 |
| 5 | Kansas | #13 | 1,012 |
| 6 | Idaho | #14 | 635 |
| 7 | Missouri | #15 | 2,029 |
| 8 | Nebraska | #15 | 619 |
| 9 | Arkansas | #16 | 952 |
| 10 | Indiana | #16 | 2,093 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Mexico | #166 | 130 |
| 2 | District of Columbia | #124 | 71 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | #106 | 619 |
| 4 | Rhode Island | #88 | 130 |
| 5 | Hawaii | #86 | 97 |
| 6 | California | #86 | 4,720 |
| 7 | Florida | #86 | 2,352 |
| 8 | Delaware | #83 | 139 |
| 9 | Maryland | #76 | 762 |
| 10 | New Jersey | #75 | 1,150 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Hudson in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Hudson?
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 Hudson to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Hudson 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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