Humanverse

Million vs Milton

American parents have registered 118,551 Miltons since 1880, against 513 Millions. Milton is still ahead, with 125 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Million against Milton, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Million Milton

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

Milton 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 2022, when Million had 79 and Milton had 153.

Side by side

  Million Milton
Total US births 513118,551
Most in one year 792,603
Babies in 2025 34125
Estimated living today 51042,000
Median age today 463
Peak year 20221920
Best rank 2,150th boys74th boys
Rank in 2025 4,249th1,436th
First recorded 19981880
Girls / boys 86 / 427615 / 117,936

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 Miltons alive today are over 63; half the Millions are over 4. That is 59 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 Million Milton
England and Wales 3140

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: Million and Milton.