Drake may still be one of the biggest names in hip-hop, but as a baby name, it’s crashing.According to new data from the Social Security Administration, the name Drake fell 168 spots in popularity between 2024 and 2025, landing at No. 827 and making it the 16th fastest-declining baby name in the country.The timing is hard to ignore. In February 2025, Drake’s feud with Kendrick Lamar reached a fever pitch when the latter performed his Grammy-winning Drake diss track “Not Like Us” during his explosive Super Bowl halftime performance. “Drake fell pretty sharply between 2024 and 2025, likely in part thanks to Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show ― and the associated allegations,” Sophie Kihm, the editor-in-chief of Nameberry, told HuffPost. “Like with the [presidential] names, parents want to avoid any unsavory associations. But Drake was already falling from its peak in 2010, so this just accelerated its decline.”Still, it’s worth noting that the name did get a slight bump in popularity from No. 681 in 2023 to No. 659 in 2024, as well as little boosts in 2020 and 2018. “I do think the anti-Drake Super Bowl did have an impact on the decline of the name Drake, as well as the overall perception of Drake in the public eye,” said baby name consultant Jenn Ficarra. “For all intents and purposes, a name like Drake checks a lot of the boxes people are looking for with boy names these days, but the one thing stopping them from using it would be an identifiable public figure, especially one with a less than favorable perception.”But the story is more complicated than one viral moment.“Drake’s decline actually began in 2011, long before the highly publicized Kendrick Lamar feud or the anti-Drake Super Bowl moment,” said baby name consultant Taylor Humphrey. “So while I don’t think the recent backlash helped, I also don’t think it’s the primary driver.”via Associated PressThe feud between Kendrick Lamar, left, and Drake, right, reached broader public consciousness thanks to the latter's Super Bowl halftime performance.She noted that the name peaked in 2010, as the rapper Drake was becoming one of the fastest-rising stars in hip-hop. But the name’s subsequent slide down the popularity ranking has been disappointing for Humphrey.“As a baby name consultant, this one bums me out. In my opinion, it doesn’t get any cooler than a name that means dragon!” Humphrey said. “But interestingly, even with Game of Thrones premiering in 2011 and dragons dominating pop culture throughout the decade, the broader dragon motif never meaningfully anchored Drake into American naming culture. By contrast, we are seeing animal and nature-adjacent names like Bear and Adler ― which means ‘eagle’ in German ― continue to rise.”It’s worth noting that Drake’s legal name is actually Aubrey Drake Graham — and Aubrey has its own trajectory. The name dropped off the Top 1,000 for boys after 2002 and has since migrated almost entirely to the girls’ list, where it fell 14 spots in 2025, from No. 132 to No. 146.In the rapper’s native Canada, we don’t yet have 2025 baby name data, but the numbers suggest Drake-as-baby-name never quite caught on north of the border, either. In both 2023 and 2024, only eight baby boys were named Drake in Canada, placing it at No. 2,216 and No. 2,328 in popularity, respectively.In the U.S., 299 baby boys were named Drake last year, down from 416 in 2024 and 398 in 2023.“Like Vance, which dropped out of the U.S. Top 1,000 this year, Drake is another one-syllable Anglo-Norse surname name currently losing ground to multi-syllable, vowel-heavy, multicultural names,” Humphrey noted. “Kendrick also fell this year, though not as sharply, which further suggests we’re looking at a broader stylistic shift rather than a simple referendum on either artist.”Indeed, Kendrick decreased in popularity by a relatively modest 58 spots between 2024 and 2025.“When we’re naming our children, we tend to shy away from controversy ― no matter how we vote, or what’s on our Spotify playlists,” said Abby Sandel, creator of the baby name blog Appellation Mountain. “The names Drake and Kendrick both peaked in the 2010s, when the musicians’ careers initially launched. Both names have decreased in use over the last few years.”The broader pattern extends well beyond these two names. The more famous a celebrity becomes, experts say, the less likely parents are to borrow their name.“Kendrick falling is also reflective of how the more publicity a celebrity gets and the wider-known they become, the more likely their name will decrease in popularity,” she said. “Often, parents shy away from names that have an overtly popular counterpart as they don’t want the constant comparisons or questions about the origin of the name choice. Zendaya, for example, recently fell out of the Top 1,000, which seems to coincide with how popular she has become.”Similarly, names like Beyoncé, Rihanna and Madonna have long been gone from the Top 1,000. Names like Taylor and Selena are also following a downward trajectory. “The more easily a name can be associated with a public figure, the greater the chance parents start to shy away from it, even if they like the name,” Ficarra said. For now, it seems Drake ― both the rapper and the name ― may be losing the culture war, though the artist has just released three new albums simultaneously. Whether the name stages a comeback along with his career remains to be seen.