Van
The boy's name Van has been in the national records since 1880, with 31,194 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 970th. About 20,000 Vans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 51.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Van boys named Van
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 31,194
- Estimated living today
- 20,000
- Median age today
- 51
- Peak year
- 1954
- Best rank
- 298th
- Rank in 2025
- 970th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,762 / 29,432
How old the living Vans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 31,194 babies given the name since 1880, about 20,000 are alive — 64 in every hundred. Roughly 5,000 of them are children and 6,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1974 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.
Notable Vans
- Van Morrison (born 1945)Northern Irish musician
- Van Heflin (1908–1971)American actor
- Van Johnson (1916–2008)American actor
- Van Cliburn (1934–2013)American pianist
- Ngô Thanh Vân (born 1979)Norwegian-Vietnamese actress, singer, dancer, model, businesswoman and filmmaker
- Van Jones (born 1968)American environmental advocate and civil rights activist
- Van Dyke Parks (born 1941)American musician, songwriter, arranger, and record producer
- Van Tien Dung (1917–2002)General of the Vietnam People's Army
People named Van with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Van is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Van is most concentrated in Mississippi (3.3×), Arkansas (2.7×), Louisiana (2.4×), Utah (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1954
The most popular boys’ names the year Van peaked:
Van elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Van | 580 | 652nd |
| Norway boys | Van | 203 | 319th |
| France girls | Van +1 spelling | 45 | 5,980th |
| England and Wales boys | Van | 40 | 2,682nd |
| England and Wales girls | Van | 3 | 5,876th |
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.
Van by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 578th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Van 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 | Van | 360 | 397 |
| Finland girls | Van +1 spelling | 16 | 107 |
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
Van 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.