Hamilton
Hamilton reached its high-water mark in 2016 at number 1,628, and has been recorded 6,517 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 3,128th. About 4,100 Hamiltons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 30.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Hamilton
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 6,517
- Estimated living today
- 4,100
- Median age today
- 30
- Peak year
- 2016
- Best rank
- 1,628th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,128th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Hamiltons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 6,517 babies given the name since 1880, about 4,100 are alive — 63 in every hundred. Roughly 1,300 of them are children and 480 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1995 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 Old English *Hameldūne, from hamel (“blunt, flat-topped”) + dūne (“hill”). The Scottish surname is from the place in Leicestershire. The dollar-bill sense is from the portrait of Alexander Hamilton featured on it.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Hamiltons
- Hamilton Smith (1931–2025)American microbiologist
- Hámilton Ricard (born 1974)Colombian association football player
- Erskine Hamilton Childers (1905–1974)4th President of Ireland
- Hamilton Fish (1808–1893)American politician
- Hamilton Mourão (born 1953)vice president of Brazil from 2019 to 2023 and Senator of the Republic for the state of Rio Grande do Sul since 2023.
- Hamilton Luske (1903–1968)American film director
- Hamilton Camp (1934–2005)British actor
- Hamilton Hume (1797–1873)Australian explorer
People named Hamilton with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Hamilton is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Hamilton is most concentrated in Georgia (5.7×), Texas (2.2×), California (2.1×), Louisiana (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2016
The most popular boys’ names the year Hamilton peaked:
Hamilton elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Hamilton | 145 | 3,083rd |
| England and Wales boys | Hamilton | 134 | 1,683rd |
| France girls | Hamilton | 5 | 6,547th |
| Scotland boys | Hamilton | 3 | 284th |
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.
Hamilton 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 | Hamilton | — | 22 |
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.
Related names
Hamilton 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.