Cullen
About 16,703 American babies have been named Cullen since 1880, most of them around 2010. In 2025 it ranked 1,108th. About 15,000 Cullens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 18.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Cullen boys named Cullen
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 16,703
- Estimated living today
- 15,000
- Median age today
- 18
- Peak year
- 2010
- Best rank
- 413th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,108th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 112 / 16,591
How old the living Cullens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 16,703 babies given the name since 1880, about 15,000 are alive — 91 in every hundred. Roughly 7,500 of them are children and 340 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2007 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
Origin a surname
From Scottish Gaelic cuilinn.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Cullens
- William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)American romantic poet and journalist
- Cullen Jones (born 1984)American swimmer, Olympic gold medalist, world champion, former world record-holder
- Cullen Moss (born 1981)American actor
- Cullen Landis (1896–1975)American actor, director
People named Cullen with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Cullen is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Cullen is most concentrated in Louisiana (3.7×), Minnesota (3.2×), North Dakota (1.9×), Virginia (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2010
The most popular boys’ names the year Cullen peaked:
Cullen elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Cullen | 281 | 1,270th |
| Ireland boys | Cullen | 118 | 364th |
| Scotland boys | Cullen | 91 | 304th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Cullen | 3 | 395th |
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.
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.