Meaning not yet researched.
Bear: US boys given the name each year, 1880 to 2025, from Social Security card applications. 286 in 2025. Its best rank was #760 in 2022.
US births per year · SSA card applications
Peaked at #760 in 2022; #853 in 2025. Every baby recorded as Bear in 2025 was a boy.
Baby name · US data 1880–2025
#853 for US boys in 2025. Its best year was 2022, at #760.
Hover, tap or use the arrow keys for any year. Years with fewer than five babies of a sex are not published by SSA and show as zero.
Bear: US boys given the name each year from 1880 to 2025. 286 boys in 2025. Peak: #760 in 2022 · most boys in one year: 332 (2022).
In 2025, 286 US boys were named Bear, making it the 853rd most common boys’ name of the year, down 27 places from #826 in 2024. That is 16 fewer than the 302 boys named Bear in 2024. Its best rank for boys was #760, reached in 2022. That year also had the most boys given the name: 332. For comparison, it was #1,320 in 2015 and unranked in 1950.
Social Security card records list Bear in 29 years of the 146 from 1880 to 2025, starting in 1975 with 6 babies. In all, 3,356 US babies have been given the name, all of them boys. Its busiest decade was the 2020s, with 1,757 babies named Bear.
Over the 10 years from 2016 to 2025, 2,593 US boys were named Bear; the busiest of those years was 2022, with 332. In 2025 that was about 1 in 5,972 of the boys in SSA’s list for the year.
Among the states, Bear ranked highest in Utah in 2025, at #380 for boys there. It was not in the top 100 of any state. Related spellings in the SSA files include Bjorn (5,255 babies since 1880). Rarer spellings such as Behr and Ber are summarised on this page.
Meaning not yet researched.
We publish a meaning only with a cited source and a confidence label, and never generate one. Meanings are being researched for the most common names first.
Rare spellings summarised here: Behr (323), Ber (15).
Numbers are all-time US births. Links come from Wikidata’s “said to be the same as” (P460, CC0) and our spelling rule: at most two letters different, with the same sound pattern.
No nicknames listed for Bear in the open dataset we use.
Source: carltonnorthern/nicknames (Apache-2.0).
US boys. Rank within each state. SSA leaves out states where fewer than five boys got the name, so 30 are not listed.
| State | Births 2025 | Rank 2025 | Rank 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Utah | 12 | #380 | #689 |
| Oregon | 8 | #439 | — |
| Colorado | 12 | #471 | — |
| Washington | 14 | #507 | — |
| Oklahoma | 8 | #507 | #707 |
| Missouri | 11 | #521 | #828 |
| Arkansas | 5 | #559 | #550 |
| Indiana | 10 | #625 | — |
| Illinois | 14 | #639 | #1,083 |
| Minnesota | 7 | #653 | — |
| South Carolina | 6 | #674 | — |
| Tennessee | 9 | #726 | — |
| Arizona | 7 | #787 | #786 |
| California | 27 | #864 | #1,087 |
| Ohio | 8 | #950 | #1,090 |
| Texas | 25 | #954 | #1,369 |
| Florida | 12 | #1,066 | — |
| Pennsylvania | 6 | #1,118 | — |
| Michigan | 5 | #1,131 | — |
| New York | 9 | #1,217 | — |
| Georgia | 5 | #1,372 | — |
Births and national rank for each year SSA lists the name, newest first.
| Year | Girls | Girls rank | Boys | Boys rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | — | 286 | #853 |
| 2024 | — | — | 302 | #826 |
| 2023 | — | — | 299 | #820 |
| 2022 | — | — | 332 | #760 |
| 2021 | — | — | 288 | #827 |
| 2020 | — | — | 250 | #900 |
| 2019 | — | — | 244 | #897 |
| 2018 | — | — | 207 | #998 |
| 2017 | — | — | 198 | #1,020 |
| 2016 | — | — | 187 | #1,056 |
| 2015 | — | — | 134 | #1,320 |
| 2014 | — | — | 131 | #1,329 |
| 2013 | — | — | 86 | #1,710 |
| 2012 | — | — | 79 | #1,849 |
| 2011 | — | — | 85 | #1,731 |
| 2010 | — | — | 54 | #2,357 |
| 2009 | — | — | 55 | #2,350 |
| 2008 | — | — | 48 | #2,590 |
| 2007 | — | — | 24 | #4,135 |
| 2006 | — | — | 8 | #8,816 |
| 2005 | — | — | 10 | #7,173 |
| 2003 | — | — | 7 | #8,755 |
| 2002 | — | — | 6 | #9,519 |
| 2001 | — | — | 8 | #7,601 |
| 2000 | — | — | 6 | #9,204 |
| 1997 | — | — | 6 | #8,229 |
| 1994 | — | — | 5 | #8,915 |
| 1981 | — | — | 5 | #6,370 |
| 1975 | — | — | 6 | #4,849 |
About the data: counts are Social Security card applications for US births, for names given to at least five babies of a sex in a year (SSA, names.zip, public domain). Ranks follow SSA’s own order: most births first, ties alphabetical. Files retrieved 2026-10-05 (checksum on our sources page).