Boy Names Starting With I

Ranks are each name's overall position among all 2025 boy names, so the gaps between rows are real — the names in between simply start with other letters. Want a random shortlist instead? Spin I boy names in the generator, or browse the full top 100 boy names.

How common I names are

In the 2025 top 1,000 for boys, I supplies 20 names and 1.8% of the births, which places it 18th of the 26 initials by share. From Isaac at overall #47 (5,953 births) down to Ike, the 50th name, at #2,460 (55), the first count on the table is 108.2 times the last.

That 1.8% is I's births inside the 2025 top 1,000 divided by the births of all 1,000 names — the convention the reading ranks and counts guide walks through — and the 20-name count is taken at that same depth, not at the 50-name depth of the table above.

I names across the decades

I has no boy name inside the top 200 in 1955 and 1965; the first snapshot with one is 1975, when Ian (#144) charted. The count is highest in the last snapshot, 2015, at 5, led by Isaac (#31). Cut to the same top-200 depth, the 2025 list holds 4 I names, led by Isaac at #47. 3 different names hold the lead across those snapshots: Ian, Isaiah, and Isaac. No name on the 2025 I table appears in all 7 snapshot top-200 lists.

I names held 0.00% of the top-200 births for boys in 1955 and 2.5% in 2015; at the same depth in 2025 the figure is 1.9%. The first-letter trends guide sets I's share beside the other 25 initials for every snapshot year from 1955 to 2015, for both sexes.

Faded and new

Every I boy name that appears in any snapshot's top 200 is also on the 2025 list of 50 above, so no faded names exist for this letter at the committed depths.

Of the 50 names above, 45 appear in none of the 7 snapshot top-200 lists: the first 12 by rank are Ismael (#263), Israel (#315), Ibrahim (#351), Isaias (#426), Izaiah (#635), Idris (#694), Izael (#767), Ira (#822), Ignacio (#830), Izan (#884), Ishaan (#895), and Issac (#915), and the remaining 33 follow in the table above.

Absence is relative to the committed depth: the snapshot files stop at rank 200 and the 2025 letter file stops at I's 50th name (#2,460), so a faded name may still be registered in 2025 below that point, and a newcomer may have been registered in a snapshot year below rank 200.

Shape of the list

Four letters or fewer describes 16 of the 50 names on the 2025 table (Ian, for one); five to seven letters, 32 (Isaac, for one); eight or more, 2 (Immanuel, for one). The longest spellings on the 2025 list, at 8 letters, are Immanuel and Ignatius; the shortest, at 3, are Ian, Ira, Isa, Iam, and Ike.

By popularity tier, the list holds 0 top-10 names, 3 more inside the top 100, 6 in the 101–500 band, and 11 in the 501–1,000 band; 30 sit past #1,000, outside the top-1,000 list the generator's 2025 era draws from.

Both sexes' 2025 I lists carry 5 of the same spellings, ranked once per sex: Ira (#822 for boys, #1,086 for girls), Isa (#933 for boys, #1,717 for girls), Indigo (#1,531 for boys, #854 for girls), Iman (#1,798 for boys, #2,072 for girls), and Indy (#2,369 for boys, #768 for girls). 16 of the 50 spellings on the 2025 list open Is-, the letter's most common second letter, ahead of Iz- (6), and 12 different second letters appear across the list.

I boy names: questions answered from the data

Other letters

Girl names for this letter: girl names starting with I.

Source: every name, rank, and count on this page comes from the U.S. Social Security Administration's national baby-names dataset (2025 data, from Social Security card applications). It is public-domain U.S. government data; names given fewer than 5 times in a year are excluded by the SSA, spelling variants are counted separately, and the data covers U.S. births only. Full caveats on the methodology page.