Lincoln

Meaning & origin

Presidential surnames come and go in American naming, but Lincoln arrived with an advantage no consultant could invent: the most revered surname in the country's history attached to a warm, linkable sound. Though it has appeared in the data every year since 1880, it spent its first century as an occasional tribute name. The 2010s made it a fashion, it climbed alongside Jackson and Grayson, got a celebrity boost in 2013, and peaked in 2017.

The tide has turned gently since 2018. As of 2025 Lincoln ranks No. 69, given to about one in every 363 newborn boys, still far more common than at any point in the 20th century, but clearly past its crest. Its strongholds are Wyoming, New Hampshire, and Maine, small and rural states where the presidential-surname style has held on longest.

What Lincoln retains, fad cycle or no, is substance. The nickname Linc has real mid-century charm, the historical association does steady work at every introduction, and unlike its stylistic cousins the name never feels invented. A choice that is slightly past peak but anchored to Abraham Lincoln has a floor most trend names lack.

The English city of Lincoln was Lindum Colonia to the Romans: a Latin colonia grafted onto the Brittonic lindo, "pool," for the lake by the original settlement. The place name became a surname, and the surname became American shorthand for one man. Parents have named sons for Abraham Lincoln since the 19th century, the name appears in the very first Social Security records in 1880, but for most of that span it was an occasional tribute rather than a fashion. That changed in the 2000s and 2010s, when presidential surnames (Jackson, Grant, Kennedy) became a full-blown style. Lincoln vaulted up the charts, helped visibly along when actress Kristen Bell and actor Dax Shepard used it for a daughter in 2013, and peaked in 2017.