Humanverse

Johnathan vs Jonnathan

American parents have registered 98,611 Johnathans since 1880, against 1,238 Jonnathans. Johnathan is still ahead, with 594 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Johnathan against Jonnathan, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Johnathan Jonnathan

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Johnathan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Johnathan had 1,651 and Jonnathan had 38.

Side by side

  Johnathan Jonnathan
Total US births 98,6111,238
Most in one year 3,25350
Babies in 2025 5949
Estimated living today 94,0001,200
Median age today 2926
Peak year 19901999
Best rank 108th boys1,932nd boys
Rank in 2025 508th8,243rd
First recorded 18811968
Girls / boys 349 / 98,2620 / 1,238

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Johnathans alive today are over 29; half the Jonnathans are over 26. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Johnathan Jonnathan
France 23585

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Johnathan and Jonnathan.