Nolan

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Nolan boys named Nolan

By the numbers

Total US births

136,061

Estimated living today

128,000

Median age today

12

Peak year

2015

Best rank

71st

Rank in 2025

65th

First recorded

1881

Girls / boys

556 / 135,505

How old the living Nolans are

born that year still alive today

Of the 136,061 babies given the name since 1881, about 128,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 87,000 of them are children and 2,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 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

Anglicized from Irish Ó Nualláin, diminutive of nuall (“chariot-fighter, champion”).

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

Notable Nolans

• Nolan Bushnell (born 1943)American entrepreneur
• Nolan Gould (born 1998)American actor
• Nolan North (born 1970)American voice actor
• Nolan Gerard Funk (born 1986)Canadian actor, singer and model
• Nolan Roux (born 1988)French association football player
• Nolan Ryan (born 1947)American baseball player
• Nolan Arenado (born 1991)Puerto Rican-American baseball player
• Nolan Smith (born 1988)American basketball player

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

Where Nolan is most common

• CA12,880
• TX10,079
• IL6,279
• OH6,228
• MI6,117
• PA6,025
• NY5,227
• FL4,758
• NC4,445
• IN4,368

Relative to how many babies each state records, Nolan is most concentrated in Alaska (1.8×), New Hampshire (1.7×), Minnesota (1.7×), Colorado (1.6×).

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

Names of 2015

The most popular boys’ names the year Nolan peaked:

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

All the names of 2015

Nolan 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.

Nolan: 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, Nolan is most concentrated in Jura, where 0.53% of children were given it – 78 of them.

Nolan: rank by region

In 2025, Nolan was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

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

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Nolan appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (35th), Province of Flemish Brabant (49th), Province of Limburg (64th), Province of West Flanders (84th), Province of Antwerp (94th), Province of Liège (133rd), Brussels-Capital Region (153rd) and Province of Hainaut (153rd).

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

Nolan by city

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

Nolan 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 – 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 Nolan lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 393 men called Nolan 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 22 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 30 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Nola
• Nolen
• Noland
• Nolyn
• Nolberto
• Nolia
• Nolin

Nolan against another name

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

• Nolan vs Nola
• Nolan vs Nolen
• Nolan vs Noland
• Nolan vs Nolyn
• Nolan vs Nolberto
• Nolan vs Nolia

Compare Nolan with a name of your own