Princeton
Princeton is a boy's name that peaked in 2017, when it was the 402nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 652nd. About 10,000 Princetons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 8.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Princeton
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 10,256
- Estimated living today
- 10,000
- Median age today
- 8
- Peak year
- 2017
- Best rank
- 402nd
- Rank in 2025
- 652nd
- First recorded
- 1950
How old the living Princetons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 10,256 babies given the name since 1950, about 10,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 9,000 of them are children and 20 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2017 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
From originally in honor of crown princes or princes of the British Empire but later chiefly in honor of others with the name Prince or locations named Princeton. Cf.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Princeton is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Princeton is most concentrated in Georgia (3.6×), Mississippi (3.4×), South Carolina (2.9×), Alabama (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2017
The most popular boys’ names the year Princeton peaked:
Princeton elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Princeton | 51 | 2,320th |
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
Princeton 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.