Noel

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Noel boys named Noel

Girls and boys called Noel

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 15,284 girls and 52,096 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 157 to 635.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 122 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

67,380

Estimated living today

54,000

Median age today

32

Peak year

2014

Best rank

356th

Rank in 2025

478th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

15,284 / 52,096

How old the living Noels are

born that year still alive today

Of the 67,380 babies given the name since 1880, about 54,000 are alive — 80 in every hundred. Roughly 16,000 of them are children and 6,300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1993 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 French

From Noel in the sense of Christmas; given since Middle Ages to children born at Christmastide.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Noels

• Noel Gallagher (born 1967)British singer and guitarist
• Noel Valladares (born 1977)Honduran footballer
• Noel Redding (1945–2003)English rock and roll guitarist
• Noel Fisher (born 1984)Canadian actor
• Noel Clarke (born 1975)British actor and filmmaker
• Noel Neill (1920–2016)American actress
• Noel Fielding (born 1973)British comedian and actor
• Noël Bas (1877–1960)French gymnast

People named Noel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Noel is most common

• CA10,538
• TX7,555
• NY7,138
• IL3,536
• FL2,652
• NJ2,068
• PA2,053
• OH1,648
• MI1,581
• WA1,119

Relative to how many babies each state records, Noel is most concentrated in California (1.9×), Texas (1.7×), New York (1.6×), Arizona (1.4×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2014

The most popular boys’ names the year Noel peaked:

• Noah
• Liam
• Mason
• Jacob
• William
• Ethan

All the names of 2014

Noel elsewhere

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.

Noel: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Noel is most concentrated in Lucerne, where 0.35% of children were given it – 311 of them.

Noel: rank by region

In 2025, Noel was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2024, Noel was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Noel was given 2 times or more in 10 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Noel appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (178th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, 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.

Noel by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Noel 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.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – 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 Noel lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 6,928 men called Noel 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

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Noelle
• Noe
• Noemi
• Noelia
• Noelani
• Noella
• Noemy
• Noell
• Noely
• Noemie
• Noeli

Noel against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Noel vs Noelle
• Noel vs Noe
• Noel vs Noemi
• Noel vs Noelia
• Noel vs Noelani
• Noel vs Noella

Compare Noel with a name of your own