The Social Security Administration dropped numbers recently. Drake plummeted.
From 2024 to 2025 the name fell 168 spots. It landed at number 827. That makes it the sixteenth fastest declining baby name in the country. Hard data.
Timing is suspicious. Or just obvious. February 2025 brought the feud’s climax. Kendrick Lamar took the Super Bowl stage. He played “Not Like Us.” It was explosive. It was everywhere.
“Parents want to avoid any unsavory,” Sophie Kihm of Nameberry says. She sees the link to Kendrick’s halftime show. But she points out a bigger trend. The name had already fallen from its 2010 peak. The Super Bowl just kicked it while it was down.
There were brief rebounds. In 2024 it briefly climbed back to number 659 from the year before. Tiny spikes in 2018 and 2020 too.
Jenn Ficarra thinks the public perception shifted. Drake checks the modern boxes. Short. Cool. But he is attached to a public figure who currently holds less-than-favorable press. That’s a dealbreaker for some.
Don’t blame it all on the internet though.
“The decline actually began in 2071,” Taylor Humphrey argues. Long before the feud. The recent backlash didn’t help but it wasn’t the engine of the drop.
The peak was 2010. Drake the rapper was rising fast. Then the name started sliding. Humphrey is sad about it. She loves the etymology. Drake means dragon.
Game of Thrones launched in 2011. Dragons dominated pop culture for a decade. Yet the motif never stuck to American naming habits. Parents preferred Bear. Or Adler. Eagle means are trending. Dragon ones aren’t.
Let’s look at the birth certificate. The rapper’s real first name is Aubrey.
Aubrey Graham is not exactly a hot commodity for boys either. The name fell off the top 1,000 chart after 2002. It migrated almost entirely to girls. Among girls Aubrey dropped fourteen spots last year.
In Canada? Even colder.
No 2025 data yet from north of the border but the trend is clear. Only eight baby boys named Drake in 2023? And again in 2024? That’s niche. It ranks below number 2,000 there.
In the U.S. it’s better but fading. Two hundred and ninety-nine babies last year. Down from four hundred and sixteen.
Humphrey compares it to Vance. Another one-syllable name. Both are losing ground to multicultural vowel-heavy multi-syllable names. Kendrick also fell fifty-eight spots this year. Not as sharp as Drake.
Is this a referendum on art? Probably not.
“We shy away from controversy no matter who we vote for,” says Abby Sandel.
Names tied to huge celebrities tend to die. Zendaya left the top 1000. Beyoncé Rihanna and Madonna are ancient history on these lists. Taylor and Selena follow the curve down.
Why? Parents don’t want comparisons. They don’t want people guessing at the inspiration. They don’t want the shadow.
Kendrick gets famous so does the name get saturated.
Drake the name is losing ground. The culture war is messy. He just dropped three new albums simultaneously though.
Will the music save the name? Or will parents keep looking for dragons elsewhere?
