Peyton
Feminine · Old English roots · “Pæga's farmstead or settlement”
Peyton is given to both — 88,219 girls and 52,383 boys since 1880. See Peyton as a boy nameSee other names given to both
Peyton began as a place in the English countryside — a farmstead named for a man called Pæga — and then became the name of the families who came from it. Centuries later it stepped off the surname list and onto birth certificates, keeping the same easy two beats: PAY-tun, the second syllable barely there. It is a name most Americans can say on sight, even if they pause over the spelling.
How old is the name Peyton?
Peyton first appears in US birth records in 1957 — 68 years ago. The typical Peyton alive today was born around 2012, making them about 13 years old. About 87,500 people named Peyton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Peyton most popular?
Peyton peaked in 2009, reaching #42 nationally. Today it ranks #199, 157 places below that high. See the whole 2009 chart.
Where it comes from
From Pæga (Old English personal name) to Peyton
The story of Peyton
There is a Peyton in Suffolk, and English place names of that shape — a personal name joined to Old English tūn — mark land once held or worked by a particular household. Families who left such a place carried it with them as a surname, and the spellings Peyton and Payton both settled into the record. In the American South especially, surnames of this kind moved into first-name use, handed down through families before they were ever chosen for their sound. By the middle of the twentieth century Peyton had crossed over fully into the given-name lists, and from the 1980s onward it grew quickly on both sides of the gender line.
Meaning
Pæga's farmstead or settlement
The place-name elements are clear: an Old English personal name Pæga plus tūn, 'enclosure, farmstead, village'. What Pæga itself meant has not been recovered, so the meaning stops at the man's own name.
Cultural footprint
Peyton List (b. 1998) — Cobra Kai star
Source: Wikidata — the one source on this page that is not an official agency.
How the name formed
- PægaOld English personal name
- PeytonSuffolk place name
- Peyton / PaytonEnglish surname
- Peytongiven name
Related forms: Payton · Peighton · Peyten
Pronouncing Peyton
PAY-tun
Two syllables, stress on the first. The ey is said like the a in day, not like the ey in key — the single most frequent stumble for people meeting the written form first.
Nicknames for Peyton
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
- 1957
- Most girls named
- 20095,318 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #42reached in 2009
- Change vs 2024
- −14.2%1,559 in 2025, from 1,817
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.
Peyton in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Payton in English — spelling variant
- Peighton in English — spelling variant
- Peyten in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Ohio.
Peytons among us
people named Peyton are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 1,031 born in 2025 was named Peyton
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 Diana test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Peyton's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Diana climbed just as high around 1946, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Diana's path sketches the road Peyton is walking now.
Peyton is coming down from a big peak (#42 in 2009). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Peyton is headed
Peyton is easing off slowly — about 17% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
High 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.
Peyton beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Peyton in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A genuinely unisex spelling in American use: it reads naturally for a girl or a boy, and the pronunciation does not change.
- Traceable in an unbroken line from an English place name through a surname to a given name — a documented history rather than a modern coinage.
- Said correctly on first sight by nearly everyone who speaks American English.
- Familiar enough to need no explanation, while a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate.
- Works as a surname too, which makes it easy to place alongside family names already in use.
- Peyton, Payton, Peighton and Peyten all circulate, so expect to spell it aloud fairly often. Choosing the version you want and using it consistently from the start saves the most trouble.
- Because it is given to both girls and boys, the name alone on a form, roster or email will not tell anyone which. That matters slightly more for a boy named Peyton, since more Peytons today are girls.
- It sits in a cluster of similar-sounding surname names — Layton, Dayton, Keaton — and will occasionally be mixed up with them by people half-listening.
- Its strongest years are behind it, which means fewer Peytons in any one classroom, but also that the name carries a mild stamp of the era when it was climbing.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Peyton to the vote.
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What they receive
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Peyton
Feminine · Old English roots · #199 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Peytons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 87,500 people named Peyton are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Peyton in 2025?
- Peyton ranks #199 among US girl names in 2025, with 1,559 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Peyton?
- About 1 in every 1,031 US girls born in 2025 was named Peyton — 1,559 in all.
- Will my child share the name Peyton with classmates?
- Peyton will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Peyton
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lia#200 · Sara#198 · Mabel#201 · Olive#197 · Molly#196 · Noelle#202 · Alora#195 · Stevie#203
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Peyton? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Peyton and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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