Urban
About 3,264 American babies have been named Urban since 1880, most of them around 1924. In 2025 it ranked 5,208th. About 1,000 Urbans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 22.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Urban
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 3,264
- Estimated living today
- 1,000
- Median age today
- 22
- Peak year
- 1924
- Best rank
- 626th
- Rank in 2025
- 5,208th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Urbans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 3,264 babies given the name since 1880, about 1,000 are alive — 32 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2003 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
name of eight early popes, from urbānus (“of the town or city, urbane”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Urbans
- Urban II (1035–1099)11th century pope and initiator of the Crusades
- Urban VIII (1568–1644)235 pope of the Catholic Church from 1623 to 1644
- Urban I (died 230)3rd‑century Roman bishop of Rome, Catholic saint, pope during the reign of Alexander Severus
- Urban VII (1521–1590)pope of the Catholic Church in September 1590
- Urban III (1200–1187)pope
- Urban V (1310–1370)pope of the Catholic Church from 1362 to 1370
- Urban IV (1185–1264)Head of the Catholic Church from 1261 to 1264
- Urban VI (1318–1389)pope of the Catholic Church from 1378 to 1389
People named Urban with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Urban is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Urban is most concentrated in Ohio (6.9×), Minnesota (6.2×), Wisconsin (4.5×), Iowa (4.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1924
The most popular boys’ names the year Urban peaked:
Urban elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Switzerland boys | Urban | 31 | 878th |
| France boys | Urban | 5 | 4,439th |
| England and Wales boys | Urban | 3 | 4,052nd |
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.
Urban: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Urban | 30 | 0.002% | 683rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Urban | 1 | 0.002% | 186th |
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.
Urban 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 | Urban | 20 | 71 |
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
Urban 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.