Smith
The boy's name Smith has been in the national records since 1880, with 5,664 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,477th. About 3,500 Smiths are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Smith boys named Smith
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 5,664
- Estimated living today
- 3,500
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2016
- Best rank
- 1,175th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,477th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 189 / 5,475
How old the living Smiths are
born that year still alive today
Of the 5,664 babies given the name since 1880, about 3,500 are alive — 62 in every hundred. Roughly 2,200 of them are children and 330 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 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 smith or Middle English Smith (“a surname”), alternative form of Smyth, itself from smyth (“smith”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Smiths
- Gerrit Smith Miller Jr. (1869–1956)U.S. zoologist and botanist
- Benjamin Smith Barton (1766–1815)American physician, professor, and botanist
- William Smith O'Brien (1803–1864)Irish nationalist politician
- Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947)British evangelist
- Carlyle Smith Beals (1899–1979)Canadian astronomer
- Smith Thompson (1768–1843)United States federal judge
- William Smith Clark (1826–1886)American chemist, soldier, botanist and university teacher
- Smith Cho (born 1985)American actress
People named Smith with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Smith is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Smith is most concentrated in North Carolina (4.5×), Georgia (4.2×), South Carolina (3.6×), Utah (3.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2016
The most popular boys’ names the year Smith peaked:
Smith elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Smith | 60 | 5,743rd |
| England and Wales boys | Smith | 41 | 2,734th |
| Scotland boys | Smith | 3 | 638th |
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.
Smith 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 | Smith | — | 8 |
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.
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.