Vaughan
Masculine · “the younger”
Vaughan is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 1,615 boys against 22 girls since 1880.
Vaughan begins with a letter Welsh does not have at the front of this word. The name is bychan, meaning small, and Welsh grammar mutates the opening b to an f in certain positions — and Welsh f is said as an English v. So the initial sound of this name is the result of a grammatical rule, frozen into a spelling and carried into English by people who had no idea it was happening.
How old is the name Vaughan?
Vaughan first appears in US birth records in 1911 — 114 years ago. The typical Vaughan alive today was born around 1967, making them about 58 years old. About 1,100 people named Vaughan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Vaughan most popular?
Vaughan peaked in 1912, reaching #1417 nationally. Today it ranks #12008, 10,591 places below that high. See the whole 1912 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From bychan to Vaughan
The story of Vaughan
Welsh had no fixed surnames for centuries, using patronymics instead — ap Rhys, ap Hywel — and epithets did the rest of the work of telling people apart. Fychan was one of the most useful: it marked the younger of two men with the same name in the same family, which was a constant problem in a naming system with a small stock of names. When Welsh families were required to adopt fixed surnames, a great many of those epithets froze into place, and Vaughan is one of them. It moved to the front of the name in America the way most British surnames did, and it is recorded for both sexes here.
Meaning
the younger, the smaller
From the Welsh bychan, small or little, in its mutated form fychan. It was not a description of size so much as a way of telling two men apart — the younger Llywelyn, the smaller Owain — exactly as English used the younger or junior. It became a hereditary surname once the distinction stopped mattering.
How the name formed
- bychan
- fychan
- Vaughan
Related forms: Fychan · Vaughn
Pronouncing Vaughan
VAWN
One syllable, rhyming with lawn. The gh is silent, as it is in taught and caught, and the a and u together make a single open vowel. Welsh says the original with two syllables, but the English name has been one for centuries.
Nicknames for Vaughan
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
- 1911
- Most boys named
- 200726 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1417reached in 1912
- Change vs 2023
- −28.6%5 in 2025, from 7
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.
Vaughan in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Fychan in Welsh — same name
- Vaughn in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas.
Vaughans among us
people named Vaughan are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 341,615 born in 2025 was named Vaughan
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
Fashion outlook
Vaughan 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
Vaughan beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Vaughan in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- One syllable and a clean sound, which sits well after almost any surname.
- It has a documented Welsh grammar lesson inside it, which is a genuinely interesting thing to be able to tell.
- It works for a child of either sex in the American record.
- The Welsh original is still a living word, so the name has not gone opaque.
- Vaughn is the commoner American spelling and will be written instead constantly.
- The gh does nothing and will be dropped by people writing quickly.
- Nearly every child given this spelling is a boy, though nothing in the sound settles it.
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Vaughan
Masculine · #12008 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Vaughans are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,100 people named Vaughan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Vaughan in 2025?
- Vaughan ranks #12008 among US boy names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Vaughan?
- About 1 in every 341,615 US boys born in 2025 was named Vaughan — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Vaughan with classmates?
- Vaughan will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Vaughan
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Garfield#12008 · Chas#12008 · Lew#12008 · Barney#12008 · Dewitt#12008 · Granville#12008 · Cicero#12008 · Willam#12008
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Vaughan? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Vaughan and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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