Derived from a Scottish surname, Houston has also been a given name since the 18th century. The name means ‘Hugh’s town” and is also the name of many cities.
Houston is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Houston 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 boys names, Houston ranks 727. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Houston. In the entire USA, approximately 12,239 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Houston. That is 0.00 % of all living Americans.
Derived from a Scottish surname, Houston has also been a given name since the 18th century. The name means ‘Hugh’s town” and is also the name of many cities.
Since the 1980s,... girls have also been named Houston.
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their son Houston annualy. This means that there have been boys named Houston who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus men named Houston have consistently been special. A small flight of popularity was experienced by the name way back in the last century and in one particular year, parents liked Houston even more than any other time: in 1901, it holds its present record at rank #302 in the list of the most popular boys' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Houston was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Houston has never been ranked higher than #302. In 2022, he rivaled the 631 names that preceded him on the list. In total, 400 boys named Houston were born in this year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Houston were born, there have been 190 newborns who received this name.
You may not know anyone named Houston, but there’s a good chance you live in the same state as someone with that name. In fact, 35 states are home to men and boys named Houston. (To be fair, a given name is only included in a state’s official statistics if there are at least five people with that name living in that state – so it’s entirely possible that there are still a few men and boys named Houston living in one state or another. If your name is Houston and you live outside of the states highlighted on the map, please let us know so we can refine our statistics even further). And while the first name is present in many states, it is still not one of the popular ones. In Alabama, which has the most people named Houston relative to the population, you still have to ask 2,122 men and boys their names before you hear Houston as an answer just once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter H is not particularly common as a first letter for boys' names: only 2.9% of all common boys' names in the US begin with an H. The most common first letters for boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common first letters of boys' names.
With seven letters, the name Houston 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.
This means that if 2.9% of all boys' names begin with an H, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course some names that begin with H and are extremely popular, for example Henry, currently the most common boys’ name with H.
If your name is Houston 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 Houston, you can simply say:
Hat
Orange
Unicorn
Sun
Tiger
Orange
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Houston
Houston
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
H
O
U
S
T
O
N
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
O
U
S
T
O
N
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. Houston sounds like this:
