Neill
Neill reached its high-water mark in 1950 at number 1,203, and has been recorded 1,834 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 2021. About 1,100 Neills are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 52.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Neill
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,834
- Estimated living today
- 1,100
- Median age today
- 52
- Peak year
- 1950
- Best rank
- 1,203rd
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1912
How old the living Neills are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,834 babies given the name since 1912, about 1,100 are alive — 61 in every hundred. 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 Irish
Variant spelling of Neil, anglicised form of /Irish Niall.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Neills
- Neill Blomkamp (born 1979)South African film director, producer, screenwriter, and animator
- Thomas Neill Cream (1850–1892)Scottish-Canadian serial killer
- Neill Collins (born 1983)Scottish football player and manager
People named Neill with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Neill is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Neill is most concentrated in North Carolina (19.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1950
The most popular boys’ names the year Neill peaked:
Neill elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Neill | 284 | 154th |
| Scotland boys | Neill | 163 | 155th |
| France boys | Neill | 10 | 5,500th |
| England and Wales boys | Neill | 3 | 4,685th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Neill | 3 | 357th |
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
Neill 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.