London carries 43,716 cumulative American girls on SSA record and currently sits at rank 355, with a 2013 peak. The chart traces a clean place-name climb: virtually no female presence before the early 2000s, sharp rise across the 2000s and early 2010s as American parents adopted European city names for daughters, peak in 2013, and a steady decline across the late 2010s and early 2020s.
The Celtic source
London the city name has a contested etymology that most likely traces to the pre-Celtic or Celtic Brittonic Londinion, possibly meaning "settlement of the bold one" or "unfordable river," though the precise reading is debated. Roman writers Latinized the name to Londinium, and the form has remained essentially stable for two thousand years through Old English, Middle English, and modern English use.
The given-name use for girls is purely 21st-century American, with no historical English use of London as a personal name. The pattern follows the broader American place-name fashion that gave us Brooklyn, Paris, Sydney, and Savannah as girls' names across the 1990s and 2000s. The Suite Life of Zack and Cody character London Tipton (2005-2008) and various pop-culture bearers gave the name early millennial visibility.
The place-name cluster
London sits inside the place-name cluster gaining ground across the 2000s and 2010s: Brooklyn, Paris, Sydney, Savannah, and Charlotte all share the same trajectory and the same broadly cosmopolitan register. The cluster as a whole has aged into a recognizable late-millennial cohort marker, and parents in the 2020s are increasingly choosing other styles. Browse the broader English girl names cluster.
The counter-reading
The literal-place weight is the practical issue. London is one of the most recognizable city names in the world, and the bearer will spend her life answering whether she has any connection to the city, whether her parents are Anglophiles, or whether the choice was purely stylistic. Place-names always carry their referent on the page in a way that other given names don't.
The two-syllable rhythm and the soft -don ending pair well with both short and traditional middle names. Sibling pairings work across the place-name cluster: London and Brooklyn, London and Paris, London and Sydney, London and Charlotte. Middle names tend traditional: London Rose, London Marie, London Grace, London Elizabeth. The pairing of bold modern place first with substantial traditional middle is a signature late-millennial American naming pattern that has now aged into recognizable cohort territory. See similar names on the falling names list, or compare with Brooklyn.