← All posts

Taylor Swift Baby Names: Inez, Dorothea, Archer and More

Taylor Swift's songs are full of names. Here is what real birth data shows for Inez, Dorothea, Marjorie, Archer, Betty and more.

Taylor Swift writes with names. There are girls and boys in her songs who feel like people you went to school with: Betty and James and Inez, Marjorie, Dorothea, Archer. A lot of her listeners are also at exactly the age when baby-name lists start to appear in notes apps. So the question is fair: do the names from her songs show up in the national birth record?

The honest answer is that some of them do, some were already on the way up, and the most surprising result is about her own first name. We will go through what the data actually shows, and where it cannot tell you why.

One caveat up front. A birth record counts babies, not reasons. When a name rises after a song, the song may be the cause, or it may be a coincidence, or both may be riding the same wave of old-fashioned names coming back. We will point out which is which wherever the numbers let us.

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

The name that went the other way

Start with the plot twist. Taylor as a girl’s name was a giant long before the singer was famous. In 1993, 21,270 American girls were named Taylor, the seventh most popular girl name in the country. By 2006, the year of her first album, it was still 8,566 (#23).

Then it fell. In 2015 it was 3,756 girls (#77). In 2025 it was 772 (#403), about a fifth of the 2015 count. For boys, Taylor went from 8,239 in 1992 (#52) to 398 in 2025 (#683).

So the biggest pop star of the era did not make her own first name more popular. If anything, the name was already past its peak, and it kept sliding. There is nothing wrong with Taylor, which remains a bright, friendly name. It simply shows that fame and baby names are two different currencies.

The folklore and evermore names

In July 2020 she released folklore, an album built around characters, and in December 2020 she followed it with evermore. Several of the names in those songs are old, a little unusual and entirely wearable, which is just the kind of name that tends to catch on.

Inez is the clearest case. It was given to 74 girls in 2019 and 90 in 2020. By 2025 it was 156, about twice the 2019 count (#1,396). It was already moving before 2020, up from 62 in 2015, so the song did not start the climb. But the climb is real and it continued. Its peak back in 1920 was 2,107, so it still has plenty of room.

Dorothea is the standout. In 2019 it was given to 48 girls. In 2025 it was 113, about 2.4 times as many (#1,778 versus #3,272 in 2019). In 2015 it was only 38. It is still a rare name, but a rising one, and it shares a stately sound with the revived Dorothy: Dorothy went from 398 girls in 2015 to 743 in 2025.

Marjorie is the most interesting shape. For years it sat near 200: 203 girls in 2019, 185 in 2023. Then, in 2024, it jumped to 335, moving from #1,248 to #822 in a single year. In 2025 it settled back to 246 (#1,017). A one-year jump like that is rare for a name this old, which makes it worth watching rather than explaining. The data shows when, but not why.

Betty is a gentle story. It was the second most popular girl name in America in 1930, with 38,240 babies. In 2019 only 163 girls were named Betty. In 2020 it was 198, and in 2024 it reached 253, before landing at 212 in 2025 (#1,114). A modest rise for a name that was once everywhere.

James, the boy in the same love triangle, is not a story the data can add to. It is among the most steady names in America: 11,945 boys in 2025 (#6). A popular name is a valid choice, and James proves it every year.

The names that were already climbing

Some names tied to her songs were rising before the songs, and it would be unfair to credit her.

Archer is the biggest climber on the list. In 2015, 1,275 boys were named Archer (#289). In 2019, the year of her song, it was 1,884 (#206). In 2025 it was 3,627 (#98), its highest count ever. That is nearly double 2019 and nearly three times 2015. But look at the early numbers: the name was already growing before 2019, so the honest reading is that it kept going.

Willow tells a similar story. It was 2,811 girls in 2015 (#111), 4,609 in 2019 (#45) and 5,195 in 2021, its record (#39). In 2025 it was 4,763 (#44). The jump happened before the song, and it has held steady since.

August has also grown steadily: 2,389 boys in 2019 (#167) and 3,958 in 2025 (#81), a record. As with Archer and Willow, the trend was already running. A name can be both in a song and on a long upward slope.

More names from her world

A few more names from her songs and her life are worth a look, and each one tells a small, different story.

Ivy is a rocketing success: 2,507 girls in 2015 (#130), 5,117 in 2025 (#39). Clara was given to 3,601 girls in 2025 (#63), still well under its 1918 peak of 5,778. Cornelia is the rare one: 28 girls in 2015 and 51 in 2025. Meredith has risen from 510 girls in 2015 to 656 in 2025. And Olivia is the number one girl name in the country, with 13,544 babies in 2025, a reminder that a very popular name is a perfectly lovely one.

What the numbers say

Three things stand out when you line these names up.

First, the pattern is more about old names coming back than about any single song. Dorothea, Inez and Marjorie sound like they belong to a grandmother, and plenty of old-fashioned names are climbing without any song at all: Florence went from 214 girls in 2015 to 796 in 2025. A song may nudge one of these names, but the wave looks bigger than any song.

Second, the rare names react most visibly. When a name starts at 48 babies, a few dozen extra families change the picture. When it starts at 12,000, nothing a song does is visible.

Third, fame does not carry over to the performer’s own name. Taylor kept falling while its most famous bearer kept rising.

If a name from one of her songs is on your list, you are in good company, and there is nothing to apologize for. Whether it is a rare one like Dorothea or a very common one like Olivia, the right name is the one you love saying out loud.

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