Duncan
The boy's name Duncan has been in the national records since 1880, with 21,230 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,123rd. About 17,000 Duncans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 27.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Duncan boys named Duncan
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 21,230
- Estimated living today
- 17,000
- Median age today
- 27
- Peak year
- 1997
- Best rank
- 378th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,123rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 11 / 21,219
How old the living Duncans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 21,230 babies given the name since 1880, about 17,000 are alive — 81 in every hundred. Roughly 4,600 of them are children and 2,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1998 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 Scottish Gaelic
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Duncans
- Duncan Haldane (born 1951)professor of physics at Princeton University
- Duncan Laurence (born 1994)Dutch singer
- Duncan I of Scotland (1001–1040)king of Scots from 1034 to 1040
- Duncan Edwards (1936–1958)English footballer
- Duncan II of Scotland (1060–1094)King of Scots
- Duncan James (born 1979)English singer
- Duncan Jones (born 1971)British film director
- Duncan Ferguson (born 1971)Scottish association football player and manager
People named Duncan with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Duncan is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Duncan is most concentrated in Washington (2.6×), Utah (2.5×), Massachusetts (2.2×), Oregon (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1997
The most popular boys’ names the year Duncan peaked:
Duncan elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland boys | Duncan | 3,617 | 59th |
| France boys | Duncan | 1,445 | 390th |
| England and Wales boys | Duncan | 1,238 | 220th |
| New Zealand boys | Duncan | 471 | 79th |
| Belgium boys | Duncan | 197 | 412th |
| Ireland boys | Duncan | 113 | 184th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Duncan | 9 | 221st |
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.
Duncan: rank by region
In 2010, Duncan was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Duncan | 871 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Duncan 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 | Duncan | 2,046 | 2,859 |
| Finland boys | Duncan | 10 | 25 |
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.
Related names
Duncan 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.