Wells
#345 in the US in 2025
Wells in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 746% as a share of boys' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Wells in New Zealand
Wells never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
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
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1890 | below floor | — |
| 1900 | #1,162 | 6 |
| 1910 | #1,421 | 6 |
| 1920 | #1,885 | 18 |
| 1930 | #1,821 | 17 |
| 1940 | #2,478 | 9 |
| 1950 | #2,111 | 13 |
| 1960 | #2,685 | 10 |
| 1970 | #2,621 | 13 |
| 1980 | #6,250 | 5 |
| 1990 | #5,382 | 9 |
| 2000 | #4,785 | 15 |
| 2010 | #3,377 | 32 |
| 2020 | #545 | 521 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Wells most often since 1881. 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 |
|---|---|
| Texas | 498 |
| Utah | 340 |
| North Carolina | 308 |
| California | 289 |
| Georgia | 222 |
| Tennessee | 213 |
| Illinois | 204 |
| Ohio | 197 |
| South Carolina | 186 |
| Michigan | 181 |
How these 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.
- 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.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026