Colin
Colin is a boy's name that peaked in 2004, when it was the 85th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 343rd. About 127,000 Colins are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 24.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Colin boys named Colin
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 134,151
- Estimated living today
- 127,000
- Median age today
- 24
- Peak year
- 2004
- Best rank
- 85th
- Rank in 2025
- 343rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 445 / 133,706
How old the living Colins are
born that year still alive today
Of the 134,151 babies given the name since 1880, about 127,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 38,000 of them are children and 2,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2001 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.
Where the name comes from
., a medieval short form of Nicholas.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Colins
- Colin Powell (1937–2021)American general and diplomat
- Colin Firth (born 1960)English actor and producer
- Colin Farrell (born 1976)Irish actor
- Colin MacLaurin (1698–1746)Scottish mathematician
- Colin Greenwood (born 1969)Bass player for rock band Radiohead.Bass player for Nick Cave and the Bad Seed.
- Colin Hanks (born 1977)American actor
- Colin Morgan (born 1986)Northern Irish actor
- Colin Renfrew (1937–2024)British archaeologist
People named Colin with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Colin is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Colin is most concentrated in New Hampshire (2.5×), Massachusetts (2.0×), Connecticut (2.0×), Vermont (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2004
The most popular boys’ names the year Colin peaked:
Colin elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland boys | Colin | 8,758 | 17th |
| France boys | Colin | 6,760 | 182nd |
| Ireland boys | Colin | 6,714 | 41st |
| New Zealand boys | Colin | 3,980 | 26th |
| Sweden boys | Colin | 2,797 | 45th |
| Switzerland boys | Colin | 2,536 | 49th |
| England and Wales boys | Colin | 1,329 | 311th |
| Belgium boys | Colin | 1,310 | 168th |
| Norway boys | Colin | 626 | 119th |
| Poland boys | Colin | 592 birth registrations | 159th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Colin | 162 | 96th |
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.
Colin: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Colin | 1,931 | 0.155% | 41st |
| French boys | Switzerland | Colin | 551 | 0.127% | 38th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Colin | 48 | 0.074% | 64th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Colin | 6 | 0.161% | 18th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Colin is most concentrated in Jura, where 0.45% of children were given it – 65 of them.
Colin: rank by region
In 2025, Colin was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Colin | 642 | 8 |
| Wallonia | Colin | 140 | 21 |
In 2025, Colin was given 2 times or more in 3 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Colin | 243 | 2 |
| Opolskie | Colin | 126 | 2 |
| Śląskie | Colin | 212 | 3 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Colin appears in the lists for Province of Liège (86th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Colin by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 40 | 293rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Colin among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Colin | 3,532 | 4,186 |
| Finland boys | Colin | 206 | 254 |
| the Netherlands girls | Colin | — | 8 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Colin lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 345 men called Colin were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Colin | 96 | 0.095 | 808 |
| Málaga | Colin | 52 | 0.059 | 949 |
| Almería | Colin | 21 | 0.053 | 1,157 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Colin | 24 | 0.045 | 1,761 |
| Murcia | Colin | 28 | 0.035 | 1,383 |
| Palmas, Las | Colin | 17 | 0.029 | 2,459 |
Listed in 12 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 40 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Colin against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
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.