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October 14, 2026

45 Rare Boy Names That Are Rising Fast in 2026

Forty-five boy names still outside the top 250 that more than doubled since 2020, from Kaizen to Cassian to Teddy, with the real baby counts behind each one.

45 Rare Boy Names That Are Rising Fast in 2026

Most parents hunting for a boy name want the same thing: something uncommon, but not strange. A name a teacher can read off the roll on the first try, that no one else in the class will answer to.

The trick is catching a name while it’s still in that zone. Every name below ranks outside the top 250 in 2025, and every one of them more than doubled in babies between 2020 and 2025. They’re rare today and gaining fast, so if one of these is on your list, now is the window.

We sorted all 45 by how rare they are right now. Every count is a number of real American babies.

Uncommon: ranks 250–500

You’ll meet one of these every so often. They’re established enough to feel like a real name, and rare enough to still feel like a choice.

Kaizen is the fastest riser on this whole list. It went from 103 babies in 2020 to 895 in 2025, up 769%. It first appeared in the record in 2004, with just 6 babies.

Rare: ranks 500–750

This is the sweet spot for a lot of parents: familiar-sounding, but you may never meet another one.

Want to see where one of these is headed? Check its full history, its top states and the names that sound like it with our free lookup tool.

Very rare: ranks 750–1,000

Fewer than 350 babies a year each. Pick one of these and your son will almost certainly be the only one at his school.

Teddy is the vintage one in the group. It peaked back in 1949, at 613 babies, and it’s climbing back toward that number: 301 babies in 2025, up from 135 in 2020.

What these names have in common

A few patterns jump out:

A note on “rising fast”

Doubling in five years is quick. If you love one of the names near the top of this list, like Saint, Koa or Bodie, it’s worth knowing they could be top-200 names by the time your son starts school. That’s not a reason to skip them. It just tells you what you’re choosing.

Every count on this page is a number of real American babies, taken from the official national birth record that runs back to 1880.

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