Paxton
Masculine · Old English roots · “Pæcc's settlement”
Paxton is given to both — 28,194 boys and 2,124 girls since 1880. See Paxton as a girl nameSee other names given to both
Paxton began as a patch of English ground — villages called Great and Little Paxton still sit in the flat country near St Neots, and a Berwickshire Paxton looks over the Tweed. From those places it became a family name, and from a family name it stepped into the first-name column, arriving with the whole wave of surnames that Americans took up as given names. It keeps a crisp middle: that x snaps, and the two beats land cleanly.
How old is the name Paxton?
Paxton first appears in US birth records in 1921 — 104 years ago. The typical Paxton is a kid of about 10 — this name's wave is very recent. About 28,000 people named Paxton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Paxton most popular?
Paxton peaked in 2016, reaching #203 nationally. Today it ranks #338, 135 places below that high. See the whole 2016 chart.
Paxton appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Pæcc (Old English personal name) to Paxton
The story of Paxton
The English place names came first: settlements recorded in Huntingdonshire and in the Scottish Borders, each meaning the farmstead of a man called Pæcc. Families who came from those places carried the name away as a surname, and it spread through England and Scotland and then across the Atlantic. In the United States, surnames of this kind — two syllables, a solid consonant cluster, no soft edges — began moving into use as first names for boys, and Paxton appeared on the birth records early in the twentieth century. It stayed quiet for decades before rising sharply in recent times, which is why nearly everyone carrying it now is young.
Meaning
Pæcc's settlement
The second element is Old English tūn, 'farmstead, enclosure, settlement' — the same ending as Preston and Middleton. The first is the Old English personal name Pæcc. The 'peace' idea often attached to Paxton comes from the nickname Pax, which is Latin for peace, rather than from the name's own history.
How the name formed
- PæccOld English personal name
- Pæccestūn / PaxtonEnglish place name
- Paxtonsurname
- Paxtongiven name
Pronouncing Paxton
PAK-stən
Stress on the first syllable. The x does the work of k-s, so the middle is a clean PAK-st. No competing pronunciation in English.
Nicknames for Paxton
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
- 1921
- Most boys named
- 20171,909 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #203reached in 2016
- Change vs 2023
- −27.2%988 in 2025, from 1,357
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.
Paxton in other languages
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Ohio.
Paxtons among us
people named Paxton are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,729 born in 2025 was named Paxton
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 Buddy test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Paxton's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Buddy climbed just as high around 1935, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Buddy's path sketches the road Paxton is walking now.
Paxton 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
Where Paxton is headed
Paxton should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Paxton beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Paxton in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The spelling is self-evident to American ears, sitting in a group of -ton and -xton surnames people already read without pause.
- Pax gives it a genuine one-syllable short form, which many surname-names lack entirely.
- A documented line back to Old English place names, so the history is real rather than reconstructed.
- Distinctive without being unfamiliar — a child is unlikely to share it in a classroom, but nobody will ask twice how to say it.
- It sits close to a crowded shelf — Braxton, Jaxon, Paxon, Payton — so expect the occasional mishearing or a stray letter in the spelling, and the occasional mix-up with a classmate whose name is nearly the same shape.
- The 'peace' meaning that circulates online belongs to the nickname Pax, not to Paxton itself. Worth knowing if the meaning is part of why the name appeals.
- Its rise is recent and concentrated, so it reads clearly as a young person's name for now. That fades as the first Paxtons reach adulthood, but for a while the name will place a bearer in a generation.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Paxton
Masculine · Old English roots · #338 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Paxtons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 28,000 people named Paxton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Paxton in 2025?
- Paxton ranks #338 among US boy names in 2025, with 988 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Paxton?
- About 1 in every 1,729 US boys born in 2025 was named Paxton — 988 in all.
- Will my child share the name Paxton with classmates?
- Paxton will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Paxton
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Brian#339 · Gideon#337 · Marshall#340 · Bryan#336 · Martin#335 · Cairo#341 · Orion#334 · Jax#342
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Paxton? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Paxton and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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