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Natalee vs Nathaniel

American parents have registered 288,265 Nathaniels since 1880, against 10,311 Natalees. Nathaniel is still ahead, with 2,565 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Natalee against Nathaniel, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Natalee Nathaniel

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

Nathaniel 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 2009, when Natalee had 576 and Nathaniel had 5,435.

Side by side

  Natalee Nathaniel
Total US births 10,311288,265
Most in one year 6036,829
Babies in 2025 632,565
Estimated living today 10,000249,000
Median age today 1726
Peak year 20062002
Best rank 507th girls62nd boys
Rank in 2025 2,719th140th
First recorded 19191880
Girls / boys 10,311 / 01,162 / 287,103

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 Nathaniels alive today are over 26; half the Natalees are over 17. That is 9 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 Natalee Nathaniel
England and Wales 1412,512

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: Natalee and Nathaniel.