Precious
#3,130 in the US in 2025
Where Precious stands
#3,130girls’ names · US 2025
Precious was the 3,130th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 51 births.
Its moment was 2001, when 746 babies were given it. In 3 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How Precious's figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
- A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Precious was under the floor in 3 years of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000 reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
Precious in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 48% as a share of girls' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Precious in New Zealand
In New Zealand, Precious has been registered 62 times since 2001, peaking in 2008 with 15 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Precious in England & Wales
In England and Wales, Precious was registered 203 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2019 with 39 births. It ranked #1,229 for girls in 2025 on 26 births. Across those years it has been falling.
Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.
SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1900 | #1,723 | 6 |
| 1910 | #1,267 | 13 |
| 1920 | #1,666 | 25 |
| 1930 | #3,345 | 8 |
| 1940 | #2,963 | 9 |
| 1950 | #2,121 | 21 |
| 1960 | #2,649 | 21 |
| 1970 | #1,599 | 59 |
| 1980 | #692 | 249 |
| 1990 | #452 | 547 |
| 2000 | #435 | 648 |
| 2010 | #955 | 268 |
| 2020 | #2,823 | 58 |
<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.
Where in the United States
The states that registered Precious most often since 1897. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| California | 2,141 |
| Texas | 1,454 |
| New York | 1,344 |
| Florida | 1,214 |
| Illinois | 991 |
| Georgia | 919 |
| Louisiana | 739 |
| North Carolina | 721 |
| Michigan | 648 |
| Ohio | 630 |
Questions about Precious
How popular is the name Precious?
Precious ranked #3,130 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 51 births registered with the Social Security Administration.
When was Precious most popular?
Precious peaked in 2001, when 746 babies in the United States were given the name.
Is Precious rising or falling?
Measured as a share of all girls' births, Precious has been falling between 2016 and 2025 (-48%).
Names that had their moment when Precious did
Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2001, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026
