Dylan

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Dylan boys named Dylan

By the numbers

Total US births

434,951

Estimated living today

426,000

Median age today

21

Peak year

2001

Best rank

21st

Rank in 2025

41st

First recorded

1953

Girls / boys

16,272 / 418,679

How old the living Dylans are

born that year still alive today

Of the 434,951 babies given the name since 1953, about 426,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 170,000 of them are children and 100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2004 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 Welsh

From Welsh mythology; possibly from cel for "son of the sea" or "born from the ocean." Unrelated to the name Dillon, although the homophony may result in the two being considered variant spellings of the same name.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Dylans

• Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)Welsh poet and writer
• Dylan O'Brien (born 1991)American actor
• Dylan Minnette (born 1996)American actor and musician
• Jack Dylan Grazer (born 2003)American actor
• Dylan McDermott (born 1961)American actor
• Dylan Sprouse (born 1992)American actor
• Dylan Walsh (born 1963)American actor
• Dylan Baker (born 1959)American actor

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

Where Dylan is most common

• CA54,311
• TX37,015
• NY30,701
• FL26,571
• PA17,879
• IL16,231
• OH15,887
• NJ13,884
• MI12,435
• NC12,071

Relative to how many babies each state records, Dylan is most concentrated in Nevada (2.4×), Florida (1.8×), Alaska (1.7×), Arizona (1.5×).

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

Names of 2001

The most popular boys’ names the year Dylan peaked:

• Jacob
• Michael
• Matthew
• Joshua
• Christopher
• Nicholas

All the names of 2001

Dylan elsewhere

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.

Dylan: births by region

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, Dylan is most concentrated in Neuchâtel, where 0.33% of children were given it – 117 of them.

Dylan: rank by region

In 2025, Dylan was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Dylan was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.

In 2024, Dylan was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Dylan was given 2 times or more in 3 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Dylan appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (225th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, 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.

Dylan by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Dylan 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.

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 Dylan lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 14,236 men called Dylan 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

Listed in 51 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 1 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

• Dylon
• Dyllan
• Dylann
• Dyllon
• Dylen
• Dyland
• Dylin

Dylan against another name

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

• Dylan vs Dylon
• Dylan vs Dyllan
• Dylan vs Dylann
• Dylan vs Dyllon
• Dylan vs Dylen
• Dylan vs Dyland

Compare Dylan with a name of your own