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Harvest & Thanksgiving Baby Names, Ranked by the Data

Warm harvest-season names for a Thanksgiving baby — from Georgia and Clementine at record highs right now to deep cuts like Maple and Basil.

There’s a specific kind of name that belongs to the stretch between the first frost and the last plate of leftovers — harvest colors, kitchen spices, orchard fruit, gratitude itself. Some of these are already everywhere; a few are having the single best year of their entire recorded history right now, this year, in the actual data. Here’s where each one really stands.

What makes this list different from a generic “fall names” roundup is that harvest and Thanksgiving names split cleanly into two very different stories. Some — Scarlett, Grace, Georgia — are names with real cultural weight that happen to carry a warm, gathered-around-the-table feeling. Others — Maple, Zinnia, Basil — are small, specific, almost domestic words that only became names at all because someone decided a spice rack or an orchard was as good a source of inspiration as a saint’s calendar. Both kinds are represented below, sorted by how much company your baby would actually have.

Already in full swing

Familiar enough to feel safe, seasonal enough to feel considered.

• Scarlett — Cranberry-red and currently #32, though it’s cooled slightly from its 2017 peak of #18, when 7,721 babies got the name.
• Grace — The gratitude name itself, sitting at #38 with 5,127 babies in 2025.
• Georgia — A peach-state, harvest-adjacent classic now at #99 — and that is its best rank ever recorded, up from #229 just a decade ago in 2015.
• Olive — The branch of peace and the fruit on the table, holding at #197 with 1,597 babies.

The rising middle

Climbing fast, not yet common — the sweet spot for a name that feels current rather than crowded.

• Sage — The kitchen herb and the wisdom word, up to #160 with 1,853 babies, more than double its 2015 count of 890. It’s cooled slightly from a 2022 high of #143, but it’s still one of the more secure picks on this list.
• Wren — A small autumn bird, now #231 and more than tripled since 2015 (405 babies then, 1,331 now). It’s part of a small wave of one-syllable bird names — think Lark, Robin — that have gone from novelty to genuinely common over the last decade.
• Clementine — The little citrus that shows up in stockings every winter is at #456, its highest rank ever — nearly double its 2015 standing.
• Forrest — Down from a 1994 peak of #217, but still a real presence at #374 with 850 babies, up from 640 as recently as 2020.
• Marigold — The single fastest riser on this list: #590 in 2025, up from just 67 babies (rank #2,646) in 2015 — a more than sevenfold jump in a decade.

Deep cuts, for a shortlist of one

Genuinely rare right now — you’re very unlikely to share a classroom with another.

• Maple — The syrup name, at #1,092 — also its highest rank ever, roughly triple its 2015 count of 73 babies.
• Cedar — Woodsmoke and cabin walls, at #1,250 with 160 babies, close to its 2022 peak of #1,125.
• Zinnia — A late-summer-into-fall flower, at #1,288, up from 120 babies in 2015 to 174 today.
• Wren — Also used for boys, now at #1,087 with 198 babies — triple its 2015 count of 66.
• Basil — The century-long story here: Basil peaked all the way back in 1924 at #354, then spent decades in the wilderness. It’s still rare at #2,022, but it has ticked up every check since 2015, from 52 babies then to 74 in 2025.
• Pepper — A spice-rack name that peaked in 2014 at #1,416 and has settled into true rare territory since, at #1,903 with 102 babies — still very much in use, just not trending up at the moment.

Notice how differently “rare” plays out across this list. Ginger peaked way back in 1971 at #187 with 1,670 babies, spent decades sliding, and has now leveled off at a genuine rarity of 47 babies a year — essentially unchanged since 2020. That’s a name that found its floor and stopped falling. Basil, by contrast, peaked even earlier (1924, #354) and is only now, a full century later, showing the first real signs of a second life. Same shape of story, opposite direction, and you can only tell them apart by actually looking at the years in between rather than just the current rank.

Every count on this page is a number of real American babies, taken from the official national birth record that runs back to 1880. None of these are “safe” or “risky” choices — a name at #32 and a name at #2,022 are both being given to real kids this year. This is just where each one actually sits, and where it’s been.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration data, 1880–2025.