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Jonas vs Jonathen

American parents have registered 28,588 Jonases since 1880, against 1,507 Jonathens. Jonas is still ahead, with 476 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jonas against Jonathen, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jonas Jonathen

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

Jonas has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1991, when Jonas had 163 and Jonathen had 50.

Side by side

  Jonas Jonathen
Total US births 28,5881,507
Most in one year 1,25659
Babies in 2025 476under 5
Estimated living today 25,0001,400
Median age today 1829
Peak year 20082000
Best rank 273rd boys1,815th boys
Rank in 2025 599thunranked
First recorded 18801954
Girls / boys 28 / 28,5600 / 1,507

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 Jonathens alive today are over 29; half the Jonases are over 18. That is 11 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 Jonas Jonathen
Ireland 1393

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: Jonas and Jonathen.