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Nataniel vs Natasha

American parents have registered 97,937 Natashas since 1880, against 670 Nataniels. Natasha is still ahead, with 202 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nataniel against Natasha, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nataniel Natasha

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

Natasha has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1934 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Nataniel had 21 and Natasha had 272.

Side by side

  Nataniel Natasha
Total US births 67097,937
Most in one year 304,147
Babies in 2025 15202
Estimated living today 66095,000
Median age today 1738
Peak year 20081987
Best rank 3,561st boys73rd girls
Rank in 2025 5,861st1,144th
First recorded 19771934
Girls / boys 0 / 67097,652 / 285

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 Natashas alive today are over 38; half the Nataniels are over 17. That is 21 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 Nataniel Natasha
England and Wales 48815,601
Poland 7,516312
Scotland 233,775
Ireland 1052,630
France 225830
Northern Ireland 23505
Norway 197275
Belgium 7227

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: Nataniel and Natasha.