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Girls' name · 101,012 recorded births

Sierra

#614 in the US in 2025

Where Sierra stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#614girls’ names · US 2025

Sierra was the 614th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 476 births.

peak 1998 · 5,841188019532025

Its moment was 1998, when 5,841 babies were given it. In 4 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

#614US rank, 2025 (girls)
476US births in 2025
#49its best US rank, in 1999
1998peak year — 5,841 births
100,597US births since 1940
126NZ births since 2007
289E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Sierra's figures are worked out

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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. Sierra was under the floor in 4 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

Full methodology →

Sierra in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0165331
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Sierra in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 32% 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

Sierra in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Sierra has been registered 126 times since 2007, peaking in 2022 with 18 births. It ranked #309 for girls in 2025 on 13 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.058116
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Sierra in New Zealand, 1900–2025

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

Sierra in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Sierra was registered 289 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2023 with 56 births. It ranked #763 for girls in 2025 on 48 births. Across those years it has been rising.

20200.01122
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Sierra in England and Wales, 2019–2025

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

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1940#1,31332
1950#5,3015
1960below floor<5
1970#2,93823
1980#845184
1990#1412,170
2000#535,520
2010#2141,455
2020#531568

<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 Sierra most often since 1940. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California13,340
Texas6,596
Florida4,936
Ohio4,723
Pennsylvania4,314
New York3,998
Michigan3,272
North Carolina3,074
Illinois2,917
Georgia2,915

Questions about Sierra

How popular is the name Sierra?

Sierra ranked #614 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 476 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Sierra most popular?

Sierra peaked in 1998, when 5,841 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Sierra rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Sierra has been falling between 2016 and 2025 (-32%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1998, 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

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.