Moon - Name Meaning and Popularity -

Meaning of Moon

Moon is a modern English unisex given name taken directly from the vocabulary word for Earth’s lone natural satellite, the noun itself descending from Old English mōna and ultimately from Proto-Germanic *mēnan, with cognates found throughout the Germanic language family. Adopted sporadically in the Anglo-American world during the nineteenth century and reinvigorated by the countercultural naming trends of the late 1960s—most visibly through the birth of Frank Zappa’s daughter, Moon Unit, in 1968—the name evokes ideas of lunar cycles, nocturnal serenity, and the mythological deities Selene and Luna, yet remains gender-neutral and phonetically uncomplicated. Although Romanized Korean surnames such as Moon (門, “door”) share the same English spelling, they derive from an unrelated etymon and reinforce the name’s cross-cultural visibility rather than its origin. U.S. vital statistics reveal a pattern of modest but consistent use: since first appearing in modern data in the mid-1970s, annual registrations have ranged from five to seventy-three births, with rankings fluctuating between approximately 740 and 960; the most recent figures place Moon at rank 903 in 2024 with forty-seven newborns. Pronounced simply “moon” /muːn/ in contemporary English, the name offers parents a rare, cosmically charged option that combines linguistic directness, mythic resonance, and an intrinsically inclusive character.