Burton
Masculine · “fortified farmstead”
Burton is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 22,486 boys against 48 girls since 1880.
Burton is a fortified farmstead. It is one of the commonest English place names — dozens of villages carry it — and it describes exactly what it says: the settlement by the stronghold.
How old is the name Burton?
Burton was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Burton alive today was born around 1933, making them about 92 years old. About 7,500 people named Burton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Burton most popular?
Burton peaked in 1925, reaching #222 nationally. Today it ranks #4396, 4,174 places below that high. See the whole 1925 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From burh + tun to Burton
The story of Burton
There are Burtons across England, and the families who came from them took the name. It crossed into given-name use in the nineteenth century — the ordinary route for English surnames — and American families used it steadily through the period, when a set of -ton names including Milton, Clifton, Preston and Burton were all in use together. Burton peaked in American records around 1921.
Meaning
fortified farmstead
From the Old English burh, 'fort' or 'fortified place', and tun, 'enclosure' or 'farmstead'. Burh is the word behind 'borough' and the -bury of Canterbury; tun is the word behind 'town'. The compound is entirely transparent.
How the name formed
- burh + tun
- Burton
Related forms: Burt · Bourton
Pronouncing Burton
BUR-tun
Two syllables, stress on the first. Both elements are ordinary English words and neither is said unexpectedly.
Nicknames for Burton
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 1930560 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #222reached in 1925
- Change vs 2022
- −34.3%23 in 2025, from 35
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Burton in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Burt in English — related form
- Bourton in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas.
Burtons among us
people named Burton are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 74,264 born in 2025 was named Burton
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Louie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Burton's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Louie climbed just as high around 1901, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Louie's path sketches the road Burton is walking now.
Burton sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Burton beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Burton in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is concrete and transparent, which most surname-names cannot manage.
- Burt is a short, plain form available immediately.
- It has a documented English place-name history in dozens of locations.
- It reads as a surname to many people, which is what it was for eight hundred years.
- It is period-coded to the early twentieth century.
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What they receive
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Burton
Masculine · #4396 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Burtons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 7,500 people named Burton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Burton in 2025?
- Burton ranks #4396 among US boy names in 2025, with 23 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Burton?
- About 1 in every 74,264 US boys born in 2025 was named Burton — 23 in all.
- Will my child share the name Burton with classmates?
- Burton will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Burton
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Corwin#4396 · Tennyson#4396 · Marques#4396 · Manu#4396 · Omid#4396 · Zackariah#4396 · Azeem#4396 · Odell#4396
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Burton? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Burton and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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