Graham
The boy's name Graham has been in the national records since 1881, with 61,671 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 120th. About 57,000 Grahams are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Graham boys named Graham
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 61,671
- Estimated living today
- 57,000
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 120th
- Rank in 2025
- 120th
- First recorded
- 1881
- Girls / boys
- 235 / 61,436
How old the living Grahams are
born that year still alive today
Of the 61,671 babies given the name since 1881, about 57,000 are alive — 92 in every hundred. Roughly 37,000 of them are children and 1,300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 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
The surname derives from Gra(nt)ham, the name of a place in Lincolnshire, from Old English *grand (“gravel”) + hām (“homestead”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Grahams
- Graham Greene (1904–1991)British writer, playwright and literary critic
- Graham Hill (1929–1975)British racing driver
- Graham Chapman (1941–1989)English actor, comedian and writer
- Graham Arnold (born 1963)Australian association football player and coach
- Graham Greene (1952–2025)Canadian actor
- Graham Norton (born 1963)Irish comedian, actor and television host
- Graham Potter (born 1975)English association football player and manager
- Graham Swift (born 1949)English writer
People named Graham with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Graham is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Graham is most concentrated in Utah (2.2×), North Carolina (2.2×), Colorado (1.8×), Virginia (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Graham peaked:
Graham elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland boys | Graham | 5,530 | 32nd |
| Ireland boys | Graham | 4,094 | 54th |
| New Zealand boys | Graham | 3,746 | 23rd |
| England and Wales boys | Graham | 625 | 341st |
| France boys | Graham | 140 | 6,594th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Graham | 53 | 137th |
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.
Graham 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Graham | 5 | 33 |
A count of people on a register – 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 Graham lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 297 men called Graham 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 | Graham | 93 | 0.092 | 823 |
| Málaga | Graham | 60 | 0.069 | 855 |
| Almería | Graham | 20 | 0.051 | 1,197 |
| Murcia | Graham | 29 | 0.036 | 1,336 |
| Palmas, Las | Graham | 15 | 0.026 | 2,730 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Graham | 11 | 0.021 | 3,235 |
Listed in 9 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 43 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
Graham 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.