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How old is my name?
117,820 names on file · US records since 1880
Every first name given to five or more American babies in a single year has a first recorded year — the moment it enters the national record. Type a name and you get that year, how long ago it was, and what the name has done in every year since.
Look up a name
The box resolves any recorded spelling, including ones that never entered the top 1000.
What a first year looks like
The most-given name to debut in each stretch of the record
One name per era
- JamesAlready in use in 1880at least 145 years old
- PatriciaFirst recorded 1881–1919141 years old
- KimberlyFirst recorded 1920–194992 years old
- MadisonFirst recorded 1950–197955 years old
- AddisonFirst recorded 1980–199945 years old
- ZaydenFirst recorded 2000 or later25 years old
Each row is the name with the most recorded births of every name that first appears in that stretch — measured, not chosen. The first row carries a floor rather than an age, for the reason below.
Why 1880 is a wall, not a beginning
What the records can and cannot tell you
The national birth record opens in 1880. Mary, John and Sarah are all in that first year in numbers, which tells you they were long established before it — and tells you nothing at all about when they began. Any site that hands you a birth year for those names is reading it off somewhere other than the record.
So a name already present in 1880 gets a floor here: at least 145 years old. A name that arrives later gets the real thing — the year it crossed into the record, and the count it crossed with.
One more limit worth knowing: a name is published only once at least five American babies were given it in the same year. Below that the count is withheld, so a name can exist quietly for years before its first recorded one. The whole method is written out here.
Frequently asked
The short answers
- How old is my name?
- Type it in the box above. Every name gets the year it first appears in US birth records, and how many years ago that was. Where the name was already in use in 1880, the records cannot say how much older it is — only that it is at least 145 years old.
- What happens to names older than 1880?
- US birth records begin in 1880. A name present in that first year — Mary, John, Sarah — did not start there; the record did. Those names carry a floor, never a birthday.
- Does a name's first year mean someone invented it then?
- No. It means that year is the first in which at least five American babies were given the name, which is the threshold below which the Social Security Administration does not publish a count. A name given to one or two babies for a decade first appears only when it reaches five.
- How old is the average person with my name?
- That is a different question, and each name's own page answers it: births are weighted by official life tables to estimate how many bearers are alive and what age they typically are.
Found the year — now what?
A name's age is one line of its story. Every name page carries the full curve, the states that kept it alive, and who else is carrying it today.
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