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Natanya vs Nathanael

American parents have registered 22,244 Nathanaels since 1880, against 646 Natanyas. Nathanael is still ahead, with 442 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Natanya 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 1961, when Natanya had 5 and Nathanael had 10.

Side by side

  Natanya Nathanael
Total US births 64622,244
Most in one year 23609
Babies in 2025 6442
Estimated living today 63021,000
Median age today 3323
Peak year 19922000
Best rank 4,382nd girls408th boys
Rank in 2025 13,208th632nd
First recorded 19611915
Girls / boys 646 / 017 / 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 Natanyas alive today are over 33; half the Nathanaels are over 23. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Natanya Nathanael
England and Wales 171,481

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: Natanya and Nathanael.