Lafayette
The boy's name Lafayette has been in the national records since 1880, with 4,882 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 9,714th. About 2,300 Lafayettes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 52.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lafayette boys named Lafayette
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,882
- Estimated living today
- 2,300
- Median age today
- 52
- Peak year
- 1921
- Best rank
- 698th
- Rank in 2025
- 9,714th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 21 / 4,861
How old the living Lafayettes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,882 babies given the name since 1880, about 2,300 are alive — 48 in every hundred. Roughly 220 of them are children and 660 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1973 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
surname from "the little beech tree".
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lafayettes
- Lafayette McLaws (1821–1897)Confederate Army general
People named Lafayette with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lafayette is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lafayette is most concentrated in North Carolina (5.4×), Alabama (5.1×), Mississippi (3.8×), Virginia (3.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1921
The most popular boys’ names the year Lafayette peaked:
Related names
Lafayette 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.