Kirk
Kirk is a boy's name that peaked in 1962, when it was the 138th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 2,539th. About 55,000 Kirks are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 57.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kirk boys named Kirk
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 68,264
- Estimated living today
- 55,000
- Median age today
- 57
- Peak year
- 1962
- Best rank
- 138th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,539th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 197 / 68,067
How old the living Kirks are
born that year still alive today
Of the 68,264 babies given the name since 1880, about 55,000 are alive — 80 in every hundred. Roughly 1,500 of them are children and 15,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1968 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
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Kirks
- Kirk Douglas (1916–2020)American actor
- Kirk Hammett (born 1962)American guitarist
- Kirk Cameron (born 1970)American actor
- Kirk Acevedo (born 1971)American actor
- Kirk Kerkorian (1917–2015)American businessman, investor, and philanthropist
- Kirk Hinrich (born 1981)American basketball player
- Kirk Alyn (1910–1999)American actor
- Kirk Franklin (born 1970)American gospel musician
People named Kirk with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kirk is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kirk is most concentrated in Iowa (2.5×), Utah (2.5×), Idaho (2.2×), Nebraska (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1962
The most popular boys’ names the year Kirk peaked:
Kirk elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Kirk | 423 | 463rd |
| Scotland boys | Kirk | 263 | 156th |
| France boys | Kirk | 25 | 4,088th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Kirk | 20 | 206th |
| Ireland boys | Kirk | 19 | 278th |
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.
Kirk 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 | Kirk | 5 | 8 |
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
Kirk 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.