King
King reached its high-water mark in 2017 at number 147, and has been recorded 37,890 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 405th. About 34,000 Kings are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named King boys named King
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 37,890
- Estimated living today
- 34,000
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 2017
- Best rank
- 147th
- Rank in 2025
- 405th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 40 / 37,850
How old the living Kings are
born that year still alive today
Of the 37,890 babies given the name since 1880, about 34,000 are alive — 89 in every hundred. Roughly 30,000 of them are children and 1,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 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.
Notable Kings
- King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (1906–1975)King of Saudi Arabia from 1964 to 1975
- King Vidor (1894–1982)American film director, film producer, and screenwriter
- King Wu of Zhou (1150 BC–1042 BC)founder of China's Zhou dynasty
- King Camp Gillette (1855–1932)American entrepreneur
- King Oliver (1881–1938)American jazz cornet player and bandleader
- King Von (1994–2020)American rapper
- King Diamond (born 1956)Danish musician
- King Moody (1929–2001)American actor
People named King with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where King is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, King is most concentrated in Nevada (4.0×), Georgia (2.7×), Florida (2.7×), South Carolina (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2017
The most popular boys’ names the year King peaked:
King elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | King | 647 | 572nd |
| France boys | King | 100 | 2,964th |
| Ireland boys | King | 15 | 451st |
| Belgium boys | King | 6 | 1,194th |
| Scotland boys | King | 3 | 728th |
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.
King by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 580th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
King 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 | King | 6 | 21 |
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
King 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.