Oliver, Carter, Harper: the names that end in er

One American boy in 14 born in 2017 had a first name ending in er. That is the most in any year we hold, and it is not one name doing it: Oliver, Alexander, Carter, Christopher, Hunter, Asher, Cooper, Xavier, Parker, Sawyer, across 541 spellings, and the biggest of them is only a tenth of the lot. Boys have always had the ending. In 1885 it was one boy in 20, on Walter, Peter, Elmer, Chester and Lester. At its lowest, in 1958, it was still one boy in 47.

Girls had it once. In 1942 one American girl in 504 had a name ending in er. In 1974 it was one girl in 17, and one girl in 25 was called Jennifer. Jennifer, Heather and Amber were 95% of the er girls for ten years running, and when they went the ending went with them: one girl in 147 by 2008. It is back to one in 51 now, and a third of that is one name again, Harper. In England and Wales it is one boy in 21, with Oliver a quarter of them, and one girl in 62, with Harper a third.

How we counted

A name counts if its last two letters, as the official file spells it, are e and r. That is spelling, not sound, so Oliver, Carter, Harper and Esther all count, Olivier and Xavier count, and Olivia and Alexandra do not. Boys and girls are counted from their own lists in the files, never from our catalogue's flag. There is no hand list. The American series from 1880 to 2008 holds the top 1,000 names each year, so its figures are a floor; the full American files for 1990 to 2017 and the English and Welsh files for 2024 and 2025 count every name. American counts are from 2017, the newest full count we hold, and the American rankings run to 2025. This is the fifth ending we have counted, after the last letter, son, O and ley, and it is bigger than son, O or ley.

Walter, then Christopher, then everyone

In 1880, 51 boys' names ending in er were in the American top 1,000 and eight were in the top 100: Walter 13th, Peter 31st, Elmer 41st, Luther 64th, Oliver 69th, Alexander 73rd, Homer 76th, Chester 85th. Walter alone was 15 boys in every 1,000 and 38% of the group, and he was 13th or better in every year from 1880 to 1920. The group peaked early, 49 boys per 1,000 in 1885, one in 20, with Grover 20th that year, and then slid for seventy years as the 1880 names went out one by one: Grover last listed in 1974, Homer 1983, Luther 1994, Chester 1995, Lester 1999, Elmer 2007. By 1958 the ending was down to one boy in 47, and by 1967 to 26 names in the top 1,000, the fewest in any year we hold.

Christopher brought it back on his own. He was 141st in 1880, 376th in 1933, 66th in 1950, 29th in 1960, 6th in 1970 and 2nd in 1972, and for sixteen years from 1979 he was the second commonest boys' name in America. In 1974 he was 30 boys per 1,000, one in 34, and 69% of every boy with the ending. The next er name that year was Peter at 50th. So the group in 1980 was about the size of the group in 1920, 40 boys per 1,000, but in 1920 it was fifty names and in 1980 it was one name and some change.

Then it spread out. Tyler went from 114th in 1980 to 7th in 1995, Alexander from 92nd to 21st, Hunter from 551st to 53rd, and in 1995 the ending passed its 1885 high: 61 boys per 1,000, one in 17. Christopher was down to 27% of the group. The full files carry on from there, every name counted: one boy in 17 in 1990, one in 16 in 2000 and 2008, one in 15 in 2010, one in 14 in 2017. Alexander passed Christopher in 2008. Oliver, who was 471st in 1986, passed both in 2017 and has been 3rd in America every year since 2019. In 2017 the top ten er boys' names were Oliver, Alexander, Carter, Christopher, Hunter, Asher, Cooper, Xavier, Parker and Sawyer, and Oliver had 10% of the group. Walter had 38% in 1880 and Christopher 69% in 1974.

The girls: Esther, Jennifer, Harper

For sixty-six years the er girls were Esther. In 1880 the whole group was three girls per 1,000, one in 313, across ten names, and Esther was two of the three; by 1895 she was 31st and 86% of a group of eight. From 1915 to 1930 there were five er girls' names in the top 1,000, the fewest, and in 1942 the ending touched bottom, one girl in 504. Hester was last listed in 1950.

Jennifer was first listed in 1938, at 691st in 1940, 118th in 1950, 61st in 1960, 20th in 1965, 1st in 1970. She was number one for fifteen years, and in 1974 she was 40 girls in every 1,000, one in 25, which made her 68% of the ending on her own. Heather was 3rd in 1975 and Amber 13th in 1986, and from 1975 to 1985 those three names were 95% of every girl with the ending. Nothing like that happened to the boys. Then the three fell together: in the 1990 full file they were still 90% of the er girls, 52,296 of 58,377; by 2008 the group was one girl in 147, with Jennifer 84th. Heather was last in the top 1,000 in 2016.

Harper was first listed in 2004, at 887th. By 2010 she had caught Jennifer, 2,601 girls each, and in 2017 she was 10,451 of the 33,723 er girls, one girl in 164, with Piper next at 3,542. The ending is one girl in 51 again, and the names behind Harper are new: Piper, Juniper, Ember, River and Summer were none of them in the girls' top 1,000 in any year before 1971, and Parker and Sawyer are surnames America gives to girls, 1,487 and 1,385 of them in 2017. Esther is the only er girls' name on the list in every year we hold, and she is 119th in America now, up from 203rd in 2015.

Britain: Oliver and four others

In England and Wales in 2025, 13,167 boys had a name ending in er, one in 21, across 182 names, and 3,154 of them were Oliver, 6th, a quarter of the group. Five er names are in our boys' top 100: Oliver, Alexander 40th with 1,271, Jasper 63rd, Hunter 91st and Carter 97th. Then Cooper 105th, River 110th, Chester 128th, Asher 150th, Archer 152nd, Dexter 154th, Casper 167th, Spencer 170th and Parker 175th. America gives the ending to boys one and a half times as often per head, 72 boys per 1,000 against our 48, and has eight er names in its top 100 to our five.

The difference is the surnames. America's er names below Oliver are mostly surnames and most of them barely exist here. Sawyer went to 4,146 American boys in 2017 and 16 English and Welsh boys in 2025. Ryker 3,063 and 28. Karter 2,273 and 35. Tucker 2,211, Tanner 1,322, Walker 1,096, Gunner 1,383, Conner 1,005, all under 20 here. The surnames Britain has taken are the ones in America's top 100: Carter, Hunter, Cooper, Parker, Archer, and Carter is still 2.7 times commoner there per head, Hunter 1.7. Our own er boys are the ones America has not picked up: Casper is 16.6 times commoner here, 304 boys to 123 in a country nearly seven times the size; Chester 388 to 91; Fraser 147 to 11; Dexter 3.4 times, Jasper 2.6, Oliver 1.6. Walter, the name that started all this, had 127 boys here and 1,353 there, and is 252nd in America, up from 309th in 2015.

The girls are smaller and the gap is the same shape. 4,063 girls here in 2025, one in 62, across 49 names, and Harper 23rd with 1,367 is a third of them. Then Summer 109th with 429, Esther 150th, Amber 164th, River, Piper, Ember, Juniper and Winter. America gives the ending to girls 1.2 times as often per head, and again the surnames are the difference: Parker went to 1,487 American girls and 21 here, Sawyer 1,385 and 5, Carter 598 and 4, Hunter 379 and 4. Britain gives er surnames to boys and almost never to girls. Jennifer had 59 girls here, Heather 46. Amber is 2.6 times commoner here per head, Summer 2.1, Clover 2.5; Piper is 2.4 times commoner there.

Every er name in either country's top 100 in 2025, with Christopher, Walter, Jennifer and Esther, the names that led the ending before them. The last column is the name's rank for that sex in America in 1880; “out” means outside the top 1,000. We give no English and Welsh rank for a name under 50 babies. American babies are counted in 2017, the newest full count we hold.

Since 2017

The American rankings show the boys' ending still spreading and its old leaders going. Sixty er boys' names are in the top 1,000 in 2025, up from 50 in 2015 and more than in any year of the long series, but only eight are in the top 100, down from twelve. Oliver went from 19th to 3rd. Cooper went from 77th to 27th, Asher from 82nd to 28th, Walker from 340th to 78th, Archer from 289th to 98th, River from 243rd to 111th. The names that carried the ending through the 1990s all fell: Alexander 8th to 30th, Carter 24th to 45th, Christopher 32nd to 68th, Hunter 41st to 130th, Tyler 80th to 220th, Parker 72nd to 102nd, Ryder 98th to 133rd, Tanner 224th to 475th, Conner 256th to 864th. New in since 2015: Colter 157th, Baker 217th, Ledger, Bridger, Brewer, Foster, and Casper at 924th.

The girls' ending is Harper's, and Harper is slipping: 10th in 2015, in the top ten again from 2018 to 2021, 16th in 2025. Piper fell from 67th to 155th, Jennifer from 251st to 586th, Amber from 334th to 520th, and Heather left the top 1,000 after 2016. Climbing: Juniper 427th to 100th, Parker 228th to 106th, Esther 203rd to 119th, Ember 366th to 154th; Palmer in at 232nd and Clover at 517th. In England and Wales, where we hold two years, the er boys fell 2.2% between 2024 and 2025 against 1.5% for all boys, almost all of it Oliver, 3,492 to 3,154, 3rd to 6th; Cooper went the other way, 384 to 493. The er girls fell 6.3% against 1.8% for all girls, Harper 1,461 to 1,367 and Amber 399 to 302. One year is not a trend and we do not call it one.

What we cannot tell you

Why. The files hold what parents wrote, and two letters do not have a reason. We can say that boys have had the ending in every year since 1880 and have it more now than ever, that girls had it in one wave and are getting it again on different names, and that the names behind the American rise are surnames Britain has mostly not taken. We cannot say why. The rule counts letters, so it puts Oliver and Xavier together with Carter and Tucker when they are different kinds of name, and it counts Esther and Juniper as the same ending as Harper. The long American series is a floor, because it holds only the top 1,000 names, and the full files show the gap: in 2008 the series gives 54 boys per 1,000 and the full file 63, because four hundred small spellings sit below the line. We do not hold 2009 to 2014 for America, so we cannot say which year Harper passed Jennifer or Oliver passed Alexander, only that both had happened by the 2017 count. And we hold two British years, so Britain's own history of the ending is not in this article.

What it means for you

If you are in Britain and choosing an er name for a boy, Oliver is 6th and a quarter of the ending on its own; Jasper, Hunter and Carter are in the top 100 and Cooper, Archer and Casper are climbing. Casper and Chester are ours and almost nobody else's. The American surnames, Sawyer, Ryker, Tucker, Walker, are under 30 boys a year here, so they are rare without being strange. For a girl, Harper is a third of the ending and Summer, Esther and Amber are the rest of the top four; the surnames America gives to girls, Parker and Sawyer, almost nobody here does. If you are in America, the er names going up are Oliver, Cooper, Asher, Walker and Archer for boys and Juniper, Parker and Esther for girls; Christopher, Hunter and Tyler are the ones on the way down, and Jennifer, at 586th, is lower than Esther has ever been.