Hans
The boy's name Hans has been in the national records since 1880, with 15,682 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,323rd. About 11,000 Hanses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 43.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Hans boys named Hans
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 15,682
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 43
- Peak year
- 1970
- Best rank
- 492nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,323rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 5 / 15,677
How old the living Hanses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 15,682 babies given the name since 1880, about 11,000 are alive — 73 in every hundred. Roughly 2,100 of them are children and 1,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1982 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 German
(occasionally used in English), a medieval short form of Johannes (“John”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Hanss
- Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875)Danish writer and poet
- Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851)Danish physicist and chemist
- Hans Bethe (1906–2005)German-American nuclear physicist
- Hans Zimmer (born 1957)German film composer
- Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543)German artist and printmaker
- Hans Krebs (1900–1981)German-British biochemist
- Hans Frank (1900–1946)German lawyer, Nazi politician, General Governor of Nazi occupied Poland and convicted war criminal
- Hans Georg Dehmelt (1922–2017)German physicist
People named Hans with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Hans is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Hans is most concentrated in Minnesota (4.1×), Wisconsin (3.5×), Washington (3.1×), California (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1970
The most popular boys’ names the year Hans peaked:
Hans elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Hans | 20,132 | 12th |
| France boys | Hans | 2,215 | 148th |
| England and Wales boys | Hans | 212 | 1,511th |
| Belgium boys | Hans | 137 | 362nd |
| Switzerland boys | Hans | 105 | 615th |
| Ireland boys | Hans | 12 | 264th |
| Scotland boys | Hans | 3 | 317th |
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.
Hans: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Hans | 88 | 0.007% | 664th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Hans | 14 | 0.003% | 494th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Hans | 3 | 0.005% | 128th |
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, Hans is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 28 of them.
Hans: rank by region
In 2004, Hans was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Hans | 778 | 5 |
In 2023, Hans was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Hans | 10 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – 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.
Hans by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 46 | 231st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Hans 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 | Hans | 20,229 | 28,309 |
| Finland boys | Hans | 2,479 | 3,648 |
| the Netherlands girls | Hans | 38 | 169 |
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 Hans lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 399 men called Hans 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cuenca | Hans | 5 | 0.050 | 1,056 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Hans | 48 | 0.048 | 1,365 |
| Balears, Illes | Hans | 25 | 0.040 | 1,431 |
| Málaga | Hans | 32 | 0.037 | 1,376 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Hans | 18 | 0.034 | 2,227 |
| Girona | Hans | 12 | 0.029 | 1,868 |
Listed in 18 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 34 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
Hans 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.