Lincoln went from rank 762 in 2003 to rank 31 in 2017 — a climb of more than 700 positions in fourteen years. That's one of the steepest sustained ascents in 21st-century American boys' naming. Today at rank 73, the name has settled into a stable mid-tier zone with a clear cultural anchor and a clear cohort coding.
The president and the place
Lincoln comes from Old English roots tied to the city of Lincoln in eastern England, originally Lindum Colonia in Roman times — a Romanised form combining a Celtic word for "pool" with the Latin colonia (colony). The English city gave its name to the Lincoln family and surname, which crossed to America with English settlers.
The American first-name usage is almost entirely tied to Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Before his presidency, Lincoln was rare as a given name in the U.S. After his assassination, modest usage began but stayed in the SSA top 1000 only sporadically through the early 20th century. The current revival started in the late 1990s.
The 2017 peak and what triggered it
Lincoln's climb accelerated through 2010-2017, peaking the year of the Spielberg film Lincoln (2012, but its cultural footprint extended). The peak year of 2017 also coincided with the Lincoln car brand's marketing push under Matthew McConaughey — broader cultural visibility for the name from multiple directions at once.
The phonetic profile helps. Two syllables (LINK-un), strong consonant frame, and a -coln ending that reads as authentically American without being explicitly Western. Common pairings on naming forums lean toward shorter middles to balance the two-syllable lead: Lincoln James, Lincoln Cole, Lincoln Reid. The nickname Linc works but is uncommon; most Lincolns go by the full name.
The counter-reading: is Lincoln overburdened?
One frame on Lincoln is that the presidential coding is too heavy — that naming a child after Abraham Lincoln places a specific historical weight on the kid that other surname-firsts don't carry. There's something to the critique. Lincoln's cultural anchor is sharper and more political than peers like Everett or Wesley, which read as surname-firsts without specific reference.
For parents in 2025, the presidential association is mostly an asset. Abraham Lincoln remains the most consistently positively-rated U.S. president across political demographics, which means the name carries weight without controversy. The 2010s data shows Lincoln's peak window; today it's stabilising at a lower but still strong rank.