Hugh
- Pronunciation
- [Hugh]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Intelligent
- Origin
- English
About the Name Hugh
Hugh is an English name derived from the Old French Hugues and ultimately from the Germanic element hug, meaning "mind," "heart," or "spirit" — in the context of medieval naming, "intelligent" or "thoughtful." The name arrived in England with the Norman Conquest and became widespread among the Anglo-Norman nobility, establishing itself as a thoroughly English classic. Its single syllable and clear aspirated consonant give it a dignity that has kept it in use across more than a thousand years of English naming.
Two notable bearers are on record. Hugh Grant (born 1960) is the English actor whose four-decade career has produced multiple British romantic-comedy lead roles across the 1990s and 2000s, establishing him as one of the defining British leading actors of his generation. Hugh Jackman (born 1968) is the Australian actor, singer, and producer whose three-decade career has produced multiple defining film roles — particularly his portrayal of Wolverine across the X-Men film franchise.
Hugh entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1880 and peaked in 1887 at its best rank of #69. It maintained an extraordinary continuous presence in the SSA record through 2024, when it ranked #763 with 332 births — following #784 in 2023 and #804 in 2022, a gentle upward trend suggesting continued or growing favor. Total tracked births reached 12,699 across well over a century of data. Recorded variants include Huey, the informal diminutive, Hughes, the surname form, and Hugo, the Latin and Continental European cognate.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Hugh
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Hugh by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1916 with 1,619 boys named Hugh (boy rank #96 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #732 for boys (360 US births). That's 636 places below its 1916 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 Hugh 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 Hugh the strongest states are Utah, Iowa, Minnesota.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utah | #427 | 107 |
| 2 | Iowa | #497 | 20 |
| 3 | Minnesota | #504 | 99 |
| 4 | Massachusetts | #533 | 74 |
| 5 | Oregon | #542 | 32 |
| 6 | Mississippi | #572 | 20 |
| 7 | Washington | #582 | 60 |
| 8 | Kansas | #587 | 16 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #596 | 59 |
| 10 | South Carolina | #614 | 35 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #926 | 148 |
| 2 | Georgia | #862 | 70 |
| 3 | California | #859 | 165 |
| 4 | New York | #824 | 116 |
| 5 | Michigan | #808 | 54 |
| 6 | Arizona | #793 | 27 |
| 7 | Pennsylvania | #778 | 75 |
| 8 | Maryland | #777 | 24 |
| 9 | Ohio | #730 | 86 |
| 10 | Tennessee | #725 | 81 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Hugh in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Hugh
2 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Hugh.
- Hugh Grant — Movie Actor (1960)
- Hugh Jackman — Movie Actor (1968)
Looking for names like Hugh?
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 Hugh to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Hugh 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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