In 2010, nearly 100,000 baby boys were given names ending in the -ayden/aden sound — Aiden, Jayden, Kayden, Brayden, Zayden, Hayden, Landon, and their many spelling variations. That's more than any traditional name in that year. It's the biggest phonetic naming craze in modern American history.
And it's now in retreat.
The numbers
| Year | -ayden Family Total | Liam (for comparison) |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 23,143 | 2,781 |
| 2005 | 78,945 | 4,152 |
| 2010 | 99,599 | 10,932 |
| 2015 | 76,169 | 18,407 |
| 2020 | 49,315 | 19,858 |
| 2024 | 36,661 | 22,164 |
The -aiden family still outnumbers Liam in 2024 — but the direction is clear. 99,000 per year at the peak; 36,000 now; falling further each year.
The individual names
Aiden (+ Aidan, Ayden) — combined 2024: ~9,418 babies
Aiden is the anchor of the family and the only member with a legitimate ancient name behind it. Aidan (the traditional Irish spelling) traces to Aodhán — a diminutive of Aodh, the Irish god of fire and sun. "Little fire." Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne (died 651 AD) was the Irish monk who brought Christianity to Northumbria; Aidan is one of the most important names in Celtic history.
Aiden (the modern Americanized spelling) first appeared widely in the late 1990s. The TV series Sex and the City featured a character named Aidan Shaw (Carrie's recurring love interest) from 2000 to 2004 — and the name climbed dramatically through those years.
| Year | Aiden/Aidan Rank |
|---|---|
| 2000 | #137 |
| 2005 | #6 |
| 2010 | #8 |
| 2015 | #13 |
| 2024 | #47 |
Jayden (+ Jaden, Jaiden) — combined 2024: ~6,597 babies
Jayden has no ancient etymology — it was invented by combining Jay (a common American name) with the -den/-don sound. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith named their son Jaden (different spelling) in 1998, putting the name in the news precisely when the -aden craze was emerging. Jaden Smith's visibility as a celebrity child in the 2000s is one of the clearest examples of celebrity baby naming driving a phonetic trend. See pop culture names.
Kayden/Kaiden/Kaden/Caden — combined 2024: ~8,922 babies
The K/C variants of the -ayden sound: pure phonetic invention. Kaden doesn't trace to any established name tradition — it was created entirely within the -aiden craze. The multiple spellings (Kayden, Kaiden, Kaden, Caden, Caiden) are all competing representations of the same invented sound.
Hayden — 2024: #154 (2,337 boys)
Hayden has an older history than most of its rhyming neighbors — it was an English surname (from Old English hēg + denu: "hay valley") and appears in the US data before the -aden craze. The composer Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) provides a legitimate cultural reference. At #154, Hayden is the most stable of the family — it's slowly declining rather than crashing.
Brayden/Braeden/Braden — combined 2024: ~2,240 babies
Braden is an Irish surname (Ó Bradáin, descendant of Bradán = salmon). The -ayden spelling (Brayden) was invented within the naming craze. The combined Brayden family peaked around 2010 and has fallen sharply — from over 12,000 per year to under 2,500.
Zayden/Zaiden — combined 2024: ~2,300 babies
Zayden is pure phonetic extension — the family reached the last letter of the alphabet and kept going. Virtually no babies named Zayden before 2003; it's entirely a product of the naming craze.
Landon — 2024: #106 (3,316 babies)
Landon (Old English lang + dun: "long hill") is an English surname with legitimate roots. Michael Landon (the actor, 1936–1991) gave it American cultural visibility. Landon predates the -aden craze but was swept up in it — it fits the sound pattern and benefits from parents who wanted the sound without a made-up name.
How the craze spread
The -ayden family is the clearest example of phoneme adoption in baby naming: a sound pattern, rather than a specific name, spreads through the population.
The sequence:
- Aidan rises (legitimate Irish name, early adopter parents in late 1990s)
- Sex and the City (2000–2004) amplifies Aiden specifically
- Parents who hear Aiden and like the sound start inventing rhymes: Jayden, Kayden
- Celebrity Jaden Smith (born 1998) adds Jayden to the mainstream
- The sound proliferates: Brayden, Zayden, Raiden (from Japanese Raijin, the thunder god)
- Spelling variation begins: Aiden/Ayden/Aden, Jayden/Jaden/Jaiden
- Peak saturation 2010: 100,000 babies per year
- Decline begins as the sound becomes associated with the toddler/school-age generation
The decline is driven by the same mechanism as every generational name: the -ayden names are now the names of 10–20-year-olds. Parents in 2024 who are naming babies are in their late 20s and 30s — they know Aidens and Jaydens; those names feel like their generation's names.
The spelling wars
One of the most unusual features of the -aiden craze is the proliferation of invented spellings. SSA data captures this clearly — Kayden, Kaiden, Kaden, Caiden, and Caden all appear simultaneously in the charts, representing different parents' guesses at how to spell the same sound.
This is unusual in naming history. Traditional names have canonical spellings; even names with multiple legitimate forms (Catherine/Katherine, Michael/Micheal) have a clearly dominant variant. But the -ayden family names were invented rapidly enough that no spelling ever established dominance.
The top spelling for each family:
- Aiden (over Aidan/Ayden)
- Jayden (over Jaden/Jaiden)
- Kayden (over Caden/Kaiden)
- Brayden (over Braden/Braeden)
What replaces them?
The -aiden craze is being replaced by entirely different sounds. The names rising to replace them are:
- British vintage revival: Oliver, Theodore, Henry, Emmett — two and three syllables, historical rather than invented
- One-syllable minimalism: Jack, Leo, Kai, Luca, Beau — short and distinct
- Elaborate Latinate names: Sebastian, Elijah, Ezra, Mateo — traditional and global
The shift is from invented American sounds to retrieved historical names. The aesthetics couldn't be more different.
Aidan — the name underneath
One important note: Aidan (the Irish spelling) is holding up slightly better than Aiden (the Americanized spelling). Aidan is at #312; Aiden is at #47 — but Aiden's faster decline means the gap between them is narrowing. The original Irish form with its authentic Celtic heritage may survive the craze's decline better than the invented variants, the same way Matthew survived when Matt-ew-rhyming names faded.
Aidan's etymology — Aodhán, little fire, from the Celtic fire god — gives it an independent identity that none of the invented -ayden names can claim. See Irish names.
Data: SSA 2000–2024 US releases. Totals include all spelling variants in the SSA dataset.