Phelan
Phelan is a boy's name that peaked in 1996, when it was the 2,838th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 12,008th. About 620 Phelans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 26.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Phelan boys named Phelan
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 649
- Estimated living today
- 620
- Median age today
- 26
- Peak year
- 1996
- Best rank
- 2,838th
- Rank in 2025
- 12,008th
- First recorded
- 1949
- Girls / boys
- 68 / 581
How old the living Phelans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 649 babies given the name since 1949, about 620 are alive — 96 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1999 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
Reduced Anglicized form of Irish Ó Faoláin (“descendant of Faolán”), a hypocoristic form of faol (“wolf”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Phelans
- Phelan Hill (born 1979)British rower
People named Phelan with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Names of 1996
The most popular boys’ names the year Phelan peaked:
Phelan elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Phelan | 44 | 2,211th |
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
Phelan 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.