Ireland is the name of the island nation, from the Irish Ériu, a goddess of the land, plus the English land, so it means "land of Ériu". As a first name it took off in the United States in the 1990s, when Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger named their daughter Ireland in 1995. Ireland entered the top 1000 in 2001 and peaked at number 820 in 2009, but has since dropped out and ranks 2224 in 2025 with 83 births.