Preston
The boy's name Preston has been in the national records since 1880, with 123,757 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 299th. About 104,000 Prestons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 21.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Preston boys named Preston
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 123,757
- Estimated living today
- 104,000
- Median age today
- 21
- Peak year
- 2007
- Best rank
- 114th
- Rank in 2025
- 299th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 799 / 122,958
How old the living Prestons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 123,757 babies given the name since 1880, about 104,000 are alive — 84 in every hundred. Roughly 40,000 of them are children and 6,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2004 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
From Old English prēost (“priest”) + tūn (“settlement”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Prestons
- Preston Sturges (1898–1959)American film director and screenwriter
- Preston Foster (1900–1970)American actor, vocalist
- Preston Tucker (1903–1956)American businessman
- Preston Brooks (1819–1857)South Carolina politician.
- Preston Smith (1912–2003)governor of Texas
- Preston Bailey (born 2000)American actor
- Francis Preston Blair Jr. (1821–1875)Union Army general, politician
- Preston Lacy (born 1969)American stuntman and actor
People named Preston with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Preston is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Preston is most concentrated in Utah (2.8×), Idaho (1.8×), South Carolina (1.7×), Oklahoma (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2007
The most popular boys’ names the year Preston peaked:
Preston elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Preston | 3,404 | 149th |
| France boys | Preston | 1,005 | 614th |
| Scotland boys | Preston | 195 | 195th |
| Ireland boys | Preston | 153 | 247th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Preston | 120 | 167th |
| Belgium boys | Preston | 82 | 845th |
| Poland boys | Preston | 6 birth registrations | 528th |
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.
Preston: rank by region
In 2017, Preston was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Preston | 502 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Preston 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Preston | 10 | 13 |
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.
Related names
Preston 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.