Humanverse

Natalie vs Nathalie

American parents have registered 379,831 Natalies since 1880, against 20,673 Nathalies. Natalie is still ahead, with 2,736 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Natalie Nathalie

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 1887, when Natalie had 16 and Nathalie had 11.

Side by side

  Natalie Nathalie
Total US births 379,83120,673
Most in one year 10,970629
Babies in 2025 2,736145
Estimated living today 353,00018,000
Median age today 2522
Peak year 20062009
Best rank 17th girls489th girls
Rank in 2025 89th1,478th
First recorded 18801881
Girls / boys 379,062 / 76920,667 / 6

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 Nathalies are over 22. That is 3 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 Nathalie
France 1,340382,985
England and Wales 10,946406
Scotland 6,72259
Norway 2,1972,246
Ireland 2,065117
Italy 1,191723
Switzerland 604836
Poland 895219
Belgium 105965

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 Nathalie.