Morton
Masculine · “moorland settlement”
Morton is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 12,336 boys against 5 girls since 1880.
Morton is a settlement on the moor. It is one of the great English place-name compounds — moor plus town — and there are Mortons scattered across at least a dozen counties.
How old is the name Morton?
Morton was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Morton alive today was born around 1925, making them about 100 years old. About 1,900 people named Morton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Morton most popular?
Morton peaked in 1888, reaching #239 nationally. See the whole 1888 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From mor + tun to Morton
The story of Morton
There are Mortons across England, and the families who came from them took the name. It crossed into given-name use in the nineteenth century, in the same wave that produced Milton, Clifton, Burton and Preston, and it was used particularly among Jewish-American families as an English-sounding name for a boy whose Hebrew name began with an M. It peaked in American records around 1920.
Meaning
moorland settlement
From the Old English mor, 'moor' or 'marsh', and tun, 'enclosure' or 'farmstead'. Tun is the word behind 'town'; mor covered both upland heath and low wet ground, which is why Mortons appear in very different landscapes.
How the name formed
- mor + tun
- Morton
Related forms: Moreton · Morton
Pronouncing Morton
MOR-tun
Two syllables, stress on the first. Both elements are ordinary English words and neither is said unexpectedly.
Nicknames for Morton
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
- 1923482 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #239reached in 1888
- Change vs 2016
- −11.1%8 in 2021, from 9
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.
Morton in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Moreton in English — spelling variant
- Morton in Scottish — same name
Mortons among us
people named Morton are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Morton has already lived its whole cycle: it rose, had its era, and has stepped off the charts. The fashion question is behind it — what lies ahead is the waiting room where revivals begin, once a name's first generation has grown distant enough for it to sound fresh again.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The meaning is concrete and easy to picture, which most surname-names cannot manage.
- A documented English place-name history in a dozen counties.
- Mort is a short, plain form available immediately.
- The clipping Mort coincides with the French and Latin word for death.
- It is strongly period-coded to the early twentieth century.
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Morton
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Mortons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,900 people named Morton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Morton in 2025?
- Morton is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Morton with classmates?
- Morton will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Michael#21 · Matthew#32 · Mark#244 · Mason#39 · Martin#335 · Marvin#699 · Melvin#958 · Marcus#258
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Morton? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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