Theodor
The boy's name Theodor has been in the national records since 1884, with 2,216 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,992nd. About 1,700 Theodors are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Theodor
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,216
- Estimated living today
- 1,700
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2022
- Best rank
- 1,826th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,992nd
- First recorded
- 1884
How old the living Theodors are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,216 babies given the name since 1884, about 1,700 are alive — 76 in every hundred. Roughly 1,000 of them are children and 170 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 Latin, from Ancient Greek
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Theodors
- Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903)German classical scholar and historian
- Theodor Herzl (1860–1904)father of modern political Zionism
- Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969)German philosopher, sociologist and theorist
- Theodor Fontane (1819–1898)German novelist and poet
- Theodor Heuss (1884–1963)German journalist and politician
- Theodor W. Hänsch (born 1941)German physicist and nobel laureate
- Theodor Svedberg (1884–1971)Swedish chemist
- Emil Theodor Kocher (1841–1917)surgeon, laureate of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Medicine
People named Theodor with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Theodor is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Theodor is most concentrated in Washington (3.6×), California (3.6×), New York (3.0×), Texas (1.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2022
The most popular boys’ names the year Theodor peaked:
Theodor elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweden boys | Theodor | 8,706 | 24th |
| Norway boys | Theodor | 5,414 | 8th |
| Denmark boys | Theodor | 2,977 | 23rd |
| Austria boys | Theodor | 2,842 | 32nd |
| England and Wales boys | Theodor | 800 | 514th |
| Switzerland boys | Theodor +1 spelling | 548 | 156th |
| France boys | Theodor +1 spelling | 365 | 2,190th |
| Belgium boys | Theodor | 124 | 692nd |
| Poland boys | Theodor | 124 birth registrations | 270th |
| Ireland boys | Theodor | 47 | 459th |
| Scotland boys | Theodor | 14 | 532nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Theodor | 6 | 395th |
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.
Theodor: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Theodor | 501 | 0.040% | 107th |
| German boys | Switzerland | Théodor | 5 | 0.000% | 1,469th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Theodor | 37 | 0.009% | 284th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Théodor | 1 | 0.000% | 777th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Theodor | 3 | 0.005% | 179th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Théodor | 1 | 0.002% | 179th |
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, Theodor is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.11% of children were given it – 43 of them.
Theodor: rank by region
In 2025, Theodor was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Theodor | 714 | 7 |
In 2020, Theodor was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Theodor | 10 | 1 |
In 2025, Theodor was given 2 times or more in 4 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Małopolskie | Theodor | 182 | 4 |
| Pomorskie | Theodor | 212 | 2 |
| Wielkopolskie | Theodor | 175 | 5 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Theodor | 168 | 2 |
In 2021, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Theodor appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (294th).
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.
Theodor by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 970 | 14th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Theodor 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 boys | Theodor | 538 | 2,373 |
| Finland boys | Theodor | 210 | 687 |
| the Netherlands girls | Theodor | — | 16 |
Among boys in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 2,373 who carry it, 538 go by it.
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.
Related names
Theodor 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.