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Nathaniel vs Natividad

American parents have registered 288,265 Nathaniels since 1880, against 3,653 Natividads. Nathaniel is still ahead, with 2,565 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nathaniel against Natividad, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nathaniel Natividad

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

Nathaniel 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 1928, when Nathaniel had 740 and Natividad had 84.

Side by side

  Nathaniel Natividad
Total US births 288,2653,653
Most in one year 6,82984
Babies in 2025 2,565under 5
Estimated living today 249,0002,000
Median age today 2649
Peak year 20021925
Best rank 62nd boys1,210th girls
Rank in 2025 140thunranked
First recorded 18801895
Girls / boys 1,162 / 287,1031,931 / 1,722

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 Natividads alive today are over 49; half the Nathaniels are over 26. That is 23 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 Nathaniel Natividad
France 2,040125

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: Nathaniel and Natividad.