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Nathan vs Nathon

American parents have registered 589,271 Nathans since 1880, against 1,439 Nathons. Nathan is still ahead, with 4,980 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nathan against Nathon, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nathan Nathon

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

Nathan 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 1906, when Nathan had 148 and Nathon had 5.

Side by side

  Nathan Nathon
Total US births 589,2711,439
Most in one year 14,69647
Babies in 2025 4,980under 5
Estimated living today 540,0001,300
Median age today 2731
Peak year 20041990
Best rank 20th boys1,702nd boys
Rank in 2025 63rdunranked
First recorded 18801906
Girls / boys 1,774 / 587,4970 / 1,439

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 Nathons alive today are over 31; half the Nathans are over 27. That is 4 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 Nathan Nathon
England and Wales 47,38816

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: Nathan and Nathon.