Killian
Killian reached its high-water mark in 2017 at number 248, and has been recorded 16,834 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 417th. About 17,000 Killians are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 8.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Killian boys named Killian
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 16,834
- Estimated living today
- 17,000
- Median age today
- 8
- Peak year
- 2017
- Best rank
- 248th
- Rank in 2025
- 417th
- First recorded
- 1915
- Girls / boys
- 615 / 16,219
How old the living Killians are
born that year still alive today
Of the 16,834 babies given the name since 1915, about 17,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 14,000 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2017 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 Irish
An anglicized spelling of Irish Cillian.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Killians
- Killian Hayes (born 2001)French-American basketball player
- Killian Scott (born 1985)Irish actor
- Killian Overmeire (born 1985)Belgian footballer
People named Killian with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Killian is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Killian is most concentrated in Alaska (4.5×), Nevada (2.5×), Arizona (2.4×), Colorado (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2017
The most popular boys’ names the year Killian peaked:
Killian elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Killian | 21,955 | 43rd |
| Ireland boys | Killian | 3,777 | 65th |
| Belgium boys | Killian | 970 | 146th |
| England and Wales boys | Killian | 877 | 492nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Killian | 245 | 157th |
| Scotland boys | Killian | 123 | 249th |
| Poland boys | Killian | 7 birth registrations | 581st |
| France girls | Killian | 5 | 4,419th |
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.
Killian: rank by region
In 2021, Killian was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Killian | 779 | 6 |
In 2025, Killian was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Killian | 312 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Killian 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 | Killian | 7 | 13 |
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 Killian lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 276 men called Killian 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Killian | 28 | 0.053 | 1,521 |
| Palmas, Las | Killian | 15 | 0.026 | 2,730 |
| Girona | Killian | 11 | 0.026 | 1,989 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Killian | 26 | 0.026 | 2,218 |
| Zaragoza | Killian | 10 | 0.020 | 2,289 |
| Barcelona | Killian | 58 | 0.020 | 2,372 |
Listed in 14 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 38 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
Killian 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.