Gender Unisex Language(s) English | Language(s) English | |
Word/name combination of Jason and Hayden | ||
Jayden is a given name that was rather obscure until 1994, when it debuted on the United States Social Security Administration's list of the 1,000 most popular boys' names at No. 851. It became dramatically more popular among ethnic minorities in the United States thereafter with the naming of Will Smith's child Jaden Smith in 1998.
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The name was the fourth most popular boys' name in the United States in 2010, according to the Social Security Administration. Altogether, nine variant spellings appear in the top 1,000. The name in this form was not a top 1,000 name in the United States until 1994, when it ranked 851 and was associated with 159 births in the United States. By 1999, the rank had risen to 254 and by 2009 number 8 with 17,082 births.
Jadon the Meronothite appears in Nehemiah 3:7. However, variant spellings usually become popular in the wake of the popularity of an orthodox version, and in this case the converse is true—Jadon became popular only in the wake of the popularity of Jayden, suggesting that Jadon is the variant, this is not proven. In today's society many variant spellings are more popular than the original. On February 14, 1994, the year that Jayden initially rose to popularity, it was featured on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled "Thine Own Self", in which Lieutenant Commander Data loses his memory on an unfamiliar planet and is named "Jayden" by one of the inhabitants he encounters. Most likely, the name is of a modern invention, formed by blending the "Jay" sound from Jason and the "den" sound from Aidan or Hayden.