Russell
Russell reached its high-water mark in 1960 at number 56, and has been recorded 361,476 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 345th. About 207,000 Russells are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 58.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Russell boys named Russell
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 361,476
- Estimated living today
- 207,000
- Median age today
- 58
- Peak year
- 1960
- Best rank
- 56th
- Rank in 2025
- 345th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,696 / 359,780
How old the living Russells are
born that year still alive today
Of the 361,476 babies given the name since 1880, about 207,000 are alive — 57 in every hundred. Roughly 14,000 of them are children and 72,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1967 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 Anglo-Norman Russel. Equivalent to russel.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Russells
- Russell Crowe (born 1964)New Zealand actor
- Russell A. Hulse (born 1950)American astronomer
- Russell Westbrook (born 1988)American basketball player
- James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat
- John Russell Hind (1823–1895)English astronomer
- Russell Tovey (born 1981)British actor
- Russell Means (1939–2012)Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Native American people
- Taylor Russell (born 1994)Canadian actress
People named Russell with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Russell is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Russell is most concentrated in Montana (1.9×), Rhode Island (1.8×), Iowa (1.7×), West Virginia (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1960
The most popular boys’ names the year Russell peaked:
Russell elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand boys | Russell | 2,863 | 38th |
| Scotland boys | Russell | 1,605 | 63rd |
| England and Wales boys | Russell | 1,213 | 257th |
| Ireland boys | Russell | 225 | 205th |
| France boys | Russell | 100 | 882nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Russell | 16 | 192nd |
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.
Russell 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 | Russell | 8 | 31 |
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
Russell 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.