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50 Short Girl Names, Ranked by Popularity

Fifty girl names of four letters or fewer, ranked by where they actually stand in the 2025 numbers, with the ten-year trend behind every one.

A short name is the one name on your list that never gets shortened. There is no nickname negotiation, no “which version does she go by,” no spelling it out twice at the pharmacy counter. The name you write on the birth certificate is the name she uses for the next eighty years.

That is a genuine feature, and a lot of parents want it without ever quite saying so out loud.

So here are fifty girl names of four letters or fewer, ranked by where they actually landed in 2025. Ten of them are only three letters long. The most popular sits at #3 in the country and the quietest at #275, which means this list spans “three in her class” all the way down to “nobody else in the school.” Every rank and every percentage below is the real number.

Everywhere, and they earned it: ranks #3–#46

These are the short names that won. You will meet them. That is not a strike against them — a name being loved by a lot of people is evidence that it is, in fact, lovely.

• Emma — #3 (down 38% over the decade)
• Mia — #6 (down 26% over the decade)
• Ava — #11 (down 53% over the decade)
• Lily — #18 (flat over the decade)
• Nora — #20 (up 20% over the decade)
• Lucy — #24 (up 36% over the decade)
• Aria — #26 (down 5% over the decade)
• Luna — #27 (up 116% over the decade)
• Isla — #28 (up 165% over the decade)
• Ella — #29 (down 26% over the decade)
• Zoe — #31 (down 7% over the decade)
• Ivy — #39 (up 104% over the decade)
• Mila — #43 (flat over the decade)
• Nova — #46 (up 205% over the decade)

Notice how many of these are falling. Emma is down 38% from ten years ago and is still the third most popular girls’ name in America. That is what the top of this list looks like now: the giants are shedding babies every year and holding their rank anyway, because everyone below them is shedding babies too. American parents keep spreading out across more names.

The exceptions are worth staring at. Nova is up 205% in ten years, Isla up 165%, Luna up 116%, Ivy up 104%. Four short names climbing hard while the rest of the top of the list drifts down.

Familiar, but not inevitable: ranks #58–#160

This is the band most people are actually shopping in. Recognizable on a roll call, not repeated on it.

• Leah — #58 (down 31% over the decade)
• Iris — #61 (up 147% over the decade)
• Maya — #62 (down 10% over the decade)
• Ruby — #64 (up 3% over the decade)
• Zoey — #69 (down 51% over the decade)
• Eden — #72 (up 63% over the decade)
• Ayla — #77 (up 161% over the decade)
• Lyla — #80 (up 36% over the decade)
• Jade — #95 (up 4% over the decade)
• Anna — #107 (down 51% over the decade)
• Cora — #113 (down 29% over the decade)
• Rose — #114 (up 22% over the decade)
• Mary — #125 (down 16% over the decade)
• Eva — #134 (down 43% over the decade)
• Remi — #145 (up 219% over the decade)
• June — #150 (up 75% over the decade)
• Arya — #158 (up 13% over the decade)
• Sage — #160 (up 108% over the decade)

Mary is the one to sit with. It was the #1 girls’ name in America in 1921, given to 73,984 babies that year. In 2025 it went to 2,230 and sits at #125. Nothing went wrong with Mary. It is the same name it always was — short, plain, unimprovable — and it now reads as a quiet, almost unusual choice precisely because it spent so long being the default.

Still quiet: ranks #173–#275

Fewer than 1,800 babies a year, nationally. You can go a long time without meeting one.

• Ruth — #173 (up 61% over the decade)
• Lila — #187 (flat over the decade)
• Kaia — #193 (up 129% over the decade)
• Sara — #198 (down 21% over the decade)
• Lia — #200 (up 53% over the decade)
• Vera — #205 (up 41% over the decade)
• Myla — #210 (up 47% over the decade)
• Zara — #212 (up 77% over the decade)
• Ada — #219 (up 52% over the decade)
• Jane — #221 (up 24% over the decade)
• Noa — #226 (up 264% over the decade)
• Rory — #230 (up 218% over the decade)
• Wren — #231 (up 229% over the decade)
• Nyla — #236 (up 31% over the decade)
• Ana — #245 (down 18% over the decade)
• Amy — #257 (down 41% over the decade)
• Evie — #270 (up 87% over the decade)
• Lola — #275 (down 22% over the decade)

There is a whole lost generation of short names down here. Ruth was #5 in 1920. Vera was #68 in 1918, Ada #123 in 1918, Lola #142 in 1919, and Jane #36 in 1947. These were not fringe names — Ruth alone went to 26,102 babies in 1920 — and they are now quiet enough that a Ruth in a 2026 kindergarten is likely the only Ruth in the building.

Amy is the strangest entry on the page. It was the #2 girls’ name in America in 1975, given to 32,254 babies. Today it is #257 and going to 1,200 a year. Almost nobody has picked it back up, which makes it one of the few genuinely underused short names left.

The eight at their all-time high

Eight names on this list went to more babies in 2025 than in any other year on record: Nora, Lucy, Isla, Iris, Eden, Lyla, Noa and Rory. These are not names coming back. They are at their peak right now, this year, for the first time in 146 years of records.

That matters if you are shopping for something that still feels uncrowded. Rory and Noa both sit around #230, which sounds safely obscure, and both are also at their historical maximum with ten-year growth over 200%. A name can be quiet and accelerating at the same time, and the quiet is the part that expires first.

Nineteen of these fifty names have grown more than 50% in ten years. The steepest: Noa (up 264%), Wren (up 229%), Remi (up 219%) and Rory (up 218%).

The three-letter club

Ten names here are just three letters: Mia, Ava, Zoe, Ivy, Eva, Lia, Ada, Noa, Ana and Amy. Only one of them — Ivy, up 104% — is growing meaningfully while sitting inside the top 50. The rest are either large and shrinking (Ava is down 53%) or small and climbing (Noa, up 264%).

Three letters is a hard constraint. It is also, if what you want is a name nobody can abbreviate, the most direct route there.

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

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