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Harper

145,832 recorded births · active 1881–2025

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Living-age distribution

The median living Harper is 9. If you meet a Harper, there's about a 70% chance they're between 3 and 14 years old.

Popularity arc

Peak Harper: 2018. Down 24% from peak.

Projected: the dashed 10-year forecast (Holt damped-trend exponential smoothing, fit to recent years), with a shaded 95% interval.

Gender balance

4.1% male, 95.9% female.

95.9%female
Male4.1%
Female95.9%

Rarity

Harper ranks #523 out of 105,966 names ever recorded by the SSA.

99.5%more common
Commonness rank#523of 105,966

Name neighbors

People named Harper have popularity-curve siblings named:

AdelynnRykerPaisleyAdalynnMilah

Geographic fingerprint

Harpers are 1.2x more common in the South than the national average.

Under-indexed
Over-indexed
Loading map…

Predictive modeling

Three statistical models, all fit to Harper's own SSA history plus the historical behavior of every other name in the dataset.

Peak popularity prediction

Harper's modeled peak was #23 in 2019 — its trend isn't projected to beat that.

Top 1000 Reached in 2006
Top 500 Reached in 2009
Top 100 Reached in 2012
Top 50 Reached in 2014
Top 10
1% chance

Projects the trend forward, then converts share into rank using this year's popularity distribution.

This forecasts Harper's share of births by fitting a damped-trend model to its last 134 years of data and projecting 10 years forward with a widening uncertainty band. Each projected share is then translated into a rank by comparing it against 2025's actual name-popularity distribution — so the model implicitly assumes the overall shape of that distribution doesn't shift much over the forecast window. Its trend is projected to stay below its historic best over the next 10 years, so the model treats 2019 as its peak. Milestone probabilities come from how much of each year's uncertainty band clears that milestone's rank, combined across years as if they were independent — which slightly overstates the odds for names sitting right at a threshold, since a good year is usually followed by another good year rather than an independent coin flip.

Name life-cycle stage

A rule-based classifier over recent growth, momentum, and peak proximity.

Declining

Births have shrunk about 5% a year on average over the last 5 years, and the decline is accelerating.

7
years since peak
↘ falling
overall trend
~44 years
estimated time left in top 1000

Popularity survival model

Once a name reaches a rank tier, how long does it typically stay there before falling out?

Built from a Kaplan-Meier survival curve: every historical run any name has ever had above this tier, with runs still ongoing today counted as still in progress rather than as an exit.

Harper has been in the Top 100 tier for 14 years running.

Chance Harper is still in Top 100 after:

86%
5 years
76%
10 years
47%
20 years

Median years remaining above Top 100: ~20. Based on 668 historical Top 100 runs across every name in the dataset.