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Natanael vs Nathanael

American parents have registered 22,244 Nathanaels since 1880, against 2,557 Natanaels. Nathanael is still ahead, with 442 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Natanael against Nathanael, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Natanael Nathanael

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

Nathanael has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1915 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Natanael had 176 and Nathanael had 345.

Side by side

  Natanael Nathanael
Total US births 2,55722,244
Most in one year 176609
Babies in 2025 164442
Estimated living today 2,50021,000
Median age today 1223
Peak year 20202000
Best rank 1,119th boys408th boys
Rank in 2025 1,227th632nd
First recorded 19621915
Girls / boys 0 / 2,55717 / 22,227

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 Nathanaels alive today are over 23; half the Natanaels are over 12. That is 11 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 Natanael Nathanael
France 81016,600
England and Wales 801,481
Belgium 341,041 Nathanaƫl
Switzerland 52603
Poland 2539

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: Natanael and Nathanael.