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Natalie vs Nataniel

American parents have registered 379,831 Natalies since 1880, against 670 Nataniels. Natalie is still ahead, with 2,736 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Natalie Nataniel

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

Natalie 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 2025, when Natalie had 2,736 and Nataniel had 15.

Side by side

  Natalie Nataniel
Total US births 379,831670
Most in one year 10,97030
Babies in 2025 2,73615
Estimated living today 353,000660
Median age today 2517
Peak year 20062008
Best rank 17th girls3,561st boys
Rank in 2025 89th5,861st
First recorded 18801977
Girls / boys 379,062 / 7690 / 670

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 Natalies alive today are over 25; half the Nataniels are over 17. That is 8 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 Natalie Nataniel
England and Wales 10,946488
Poland 8957,516
Scotland 6,72223
Norway 2,197197
Ireland 2,065105
France 1,340225
Northern Ireland 29823
Belgium 1057

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: Natalie and Nataniel.