Sebastian

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Sebastian boys named Sebastian

By the numbers

Total US births

218,463

Estimated living today

212,000

Median age today

11

Peak year

2016

Best rank

23rd

Rank in 2025

16th

First recorded

1881

Girls / boys

408 / 218,055

How old the living Sebastians are

born that year still alive today

Of the 218,463 babies given the name since 1881, about 212,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 151,000 of them are children and 760 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2014 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 Latin, Ancient Greek

From Latin Sebastiānus, name of an early Christian saint, from ancient city of Sebaste in Asia Minor (modern Sivas, Turkey), from Ancient Greek Σεβαστός (“august, venerable, exalted”), itself a translation of the Roman title Augustus.

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

Notable Sebastians

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)German composer
• Sebastian Vettel (born 1987)German racing driver
• Sebastián Piñera (1949–2024)Chilean entrepreneur and politician
• Sebastian Kurz (born 1986)Chancellor of Austria (2017–2019, 2020–2021)
• Saint Sebastian (255–287)Christian saint and martyr
• Juan Sebastián Elcano (1486–1526)Castillian Basque sailor, explorer, and circumnavigator with the Magellan Expedition
• Sebastian Coe (born 1956)British athlete and politician
• Sebastian Stan (born 1982)Romanian and American actor

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

Where Sebastian is most common

• CA46,719
• TX34,472
• FL18,289
• NY15,098
• IL9,476
• AZ7,112
• NJ7,089
• GA4,588
• PA4,518
• NC4,403

Relative to how many babies each state records, Sebastian is most concentrated in Nevada (3.8×), Arizona (2.7×), Florida (2.5×), California (2.1×).

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

Names of 2016

The most popular boys’ names the year Sebastian peaked:

• Noah
• Liam
• William
• Mason
• James
• Benjamin

All the names of 2016

Sebastian 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.

Sebastian: 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, Sebastian is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.27% of children were given it – 166 of them.

Sebastian: rank by region

In 2025, Sebastian was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Sebastian was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Sebastian was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Sebastian appears in the lists for Province of Flemish Brabant (112th), Province of Antwerp (181st) and Brussels-Capital Region (187th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, 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.

Sebastian by city

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

Sebastian 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.

Among boys in Finland this is mostly a middle name: of the 15,581 who carry it, 3,505 go by it.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – 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 Sebastian lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 44,158 men called Sebastian 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 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Sebastien
• Sebrina
• Sebastiano
• Sebastion
• Sebastain

Sebastian against another name

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

• Sebastian vs Sebastien
• Sebastian vs Sebrina
• Sebastian vs Sebastiano
• Sebastian vs Sebastion
• Sebastian vs Sebastain

Compare Sebastian with a name of your own