Humanverse

Nat vs Natalie

American parents have registered 379,831 Natalies since 1880, against 2,162 Nats. Natalie is still ahead, with 2,736 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nat against Natalie, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nat Natalie

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Natalie for 143 years and Nat for 3 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Nat Natalie
Total US births 2,162379,831
Most in one year 6110,970
Babies in 2025 under 52,736
Estimated living today 570353,000
Median age today 6525
Peak year 19152006
Best rank 767th boys17th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked89th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 0 / 2,162379,062 / 769

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 Nats alive today are over 65; half the Natalies are over 25. That is 40 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 Nat Natalie
England and Wales 910,946
France 101,340

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: Nat and Natalie.