Humanverse

Austen

Austen reached its high-water mark in 1995 at number 420, and has been recorded 9,416 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 2,516th. About 9,200 Austens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 26.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Austen boys named Austen

Girls and boys called Austen

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 1,291 girls and 8,125 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 44 to 53.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 46 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births
9,416
Estimated living today
9,200
Median age today
26
Peak year
1995
Best rank
420th
Rank in 2025
2,516th
First recorded
1917
Girls / boys
1,291 / 8,125

How old the living Austens are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 9,416 babies given the name since 1917, about 9,200 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 2,700 of them are children and 4 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1999 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Notable Austens

People named Austen with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Austen is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Austen is most concentrated in Oregon (2.2×), Washington (2.1×), Utah (2.1×), Texas (2.1×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1995

The most popular boys’ names the year Austen peaked:

All the names of 1995

Austen elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Austen 536 837th
Scotland boys Austen 58 196th
England and Wales girls Austen 6 5,591st
France boys Austen 5 5,997th
Ireland boys Austen 3 730th

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Related names

Austen against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Austen with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.