Humanverse

Hughes

Hughes reached its high-water mark in 1916 at number 790, and has been recorded 919 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 4,249th. About 430 Hugheses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 14.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

boys named Hughes

By the numbers

Total US births
919
Estimated living today
430
Median age today
14
Peak year
1916
Best rank
790th
Rank in 2025
4,249th
First recorded
1896

How old the living Hugheses are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 919 babies given the name since 1896, about 430 are alive — 47 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2011 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 Hughes is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Hughes is most concentrated in North Carolina (16.2×).

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

Names of 1916

The most popular boys’ names the year Hughes peaked:

All the names of 1916

Hughes elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
France boys Hughes 75 4,796th

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.

Related names

Hughes against another name

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

Compare Hughes with a name of your own

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.