Susan
Susan is a girl's name that peaked in 1955, when it was the 5th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,085th. About 875,000 Susans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 67.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Susan boys named Susan
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,126,022
- Estimated living today
- 875,000
- Median age today
- 67
- Peak year
- 1955
- Best rank
- 5th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,085th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,123,481 / 2,541
How old the living Susans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,126,022 babies given the name since 1880, about 875,000 are alive — 78 in every hundred. Roughly 5,200 of them are children and 521,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1958 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 Hebrew
<div>English form of the biblical Susanna, from Biblical Hebrew שׁוֹשַׁנָּה, ultimately from Egyptian .</div>.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Susans
- Susan Sarandon (born 1946)American actress and activist
- Susan Sontag (1933–2004)American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist
- Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)American women's rights activist
- Susan Boyle (born 1961)British singer
- Susan Hayward (1917–1975)American actress
- Susan Wojcicki (1968–2024)American business executive (1968–2024) Former CEO of YouTube
- Susan Polgar (born 1969)Hungarian chess player
- Susan Collins (born 1952)United States Senator from Maine since 1997
People named Susan with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Susan is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Susan is most concentrated in Rhode Island (1.8×), Vermont (1.8×), Massachusetts (1.8×), Connecticut (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1955
The most popular girls’ names the year Susan peaked:
Susan elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand girls | Susan | 12,686 | 1st |
| Ireland girls | Susan | 8,597 | 14th |
| Scotland girls | Susan | 6,567 | 4th |
| England and Wales girls | Susan | 872 | 397th |
| France girls | Susan | 770 | 373rd |
| Norway girls | Susan | 677 | 166th |
| Italy girls | Susan | 212 | — |
| Northern Ireland girls | Susan | 69 | 187th |
| Poland girls | Susan | 45 birth registrations | 380th |
| Belgium girls | Susan | 5 | 1,402nd |
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.
Susan 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Susan | 5,128 | 7,453 |
| Finland girls | Susan | 926 | 1,808 |
| the Netherlands boys | Susan | — | 50 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Where Susan lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,347 women called Susan were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Susan | 326 | 0.317 | 333 |
| Málaga | Susan | 177 | 0.193 | 451 |
| Almería | Susan | 59 | 0.156 | 573 |
| Palmas, Las | Susan | 80 | 0.136 | 756 |
| Balears, Illes | Susan | 71 | 0.113 | 689 |
| Murcia | Susan | 89 | 0.112 | 661 |
Listed in 26 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 26 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Susan 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.