The name Heather was taken from the name of the plant, that usually grows in rocky areas. The word developed from Middle English ‘hather’ and Old English ‘hæð’ for ‘heath’ or ‘wasteland’. Heath is the male form of this name.
Heather is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Heather isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Heather ranks 993. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Heather. In total, there are currently 522,049 people – children, adults and seniors – named Heather living in the United States, which is approximately 0.16 % of the entire population.
Who would have thought it? After many years of not appearing at all in the SmartGenius statistics, Heather reached its highest rank ever in the year 1975 at #3. In other words: 24,366 newborn girls were named Heather that year. Since then, it has been considered to be a universally popular name, chosen by a large number of happy parents every year. Although the times of its highest popularity are now many decades ago, Heather is still going strong and has not been forgotten yet. We can only wait and see if there will be a new surprise in store and if Heather will be able to top its all-time best ranking ever again.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Heather was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Heather ranked 1,185 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby girls a total of 180 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Heather will remain a universally popular name.
There are only 537 different women’s names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Heather is one of them. However, Heather is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Alaska seem to particularly fancy this name – the 1,505 women called Heather who live here are 0,790% of all female residents and push their name up to #14, easily placing it in the top 100 most common female names in Alaska.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter H is quite rare as a first letter for girls' names: only 1.7% of all common girls' names in the US begin with H. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M, while U, X and Q are the least common initials of girls' names.
With seven letters, the name Heather has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 1.7% of all girls' names begin with an H, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Interesting detail: of all the names that begin with an H, Helen is the most common.
If your name is Heather and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Heather, you can simply say:
Hat
Elephant
Apple
Tiger
Hat
Elephant
Rocket
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Heather
Heather
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
H
E
A
T
H
E
R
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
H
E
A
T
H
E
R
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Heather sounds like this:
