Humanverse

Burl

Burl reached its high-water mark in 1921 at number 418, and has been recorded 7,200 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 2024. About 2,000 Burls are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 69.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Burl boys named Burl

By the numbers

Total US births
7,200
Estimated living today
2,000
Median age today
69
Peak year
1921
Best rank
418th
Rank in 2025
unranked
First recorded
1880
Girls / boys
19 / 7,181

How old the living Burls are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 7,200 babies given the name since 1880, about 2,000 are alive — 28 in every hundred. Roughly 30 of them are children and 1,200 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1956 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 Burls

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

Where Burl is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Burl is most concentrated in West Virginia (11.5×), Arkansas (10.5×), Oklahoma (9.2×), Kentucky (4.3×).

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

Names of 1921

The most popular boys’ names the year Burl peaked:

All the names of 1921

Related names

Burl against another name

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

Compare Burl 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.